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BOOKS FOR COLLECTORS 

With Frontispieces and many Illustrations 
Large Crown 8vo, cloth. 
CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA. 

By Arthur Hayden. 

CHATS ON OLD FURNITURE 

By Arthur Hayden. 

CHATS ON OLD PRINTS. 

(How to collect and value Old Engrravings.) 

By Arthur Hayden. 

CHATS ON COSTUME. 

By G. WOOLLISCROFT RHEAD. 

CHATS ON OLD LACE AND NEEDLEWORK. 

By E. L. Lowes. 

CHATS ON ORIENTAL CHINA. 

By J. F. Blacker. 

CHATS ON OLD MINIATURES. 

By J. J. Foster, F.S.A. 

CHATS ON ENGLISH EARTHENWARE. 

By Arthur Hayden. 

CHATS ON AUTOGRAPHS. 

By A. M. Broadley. 

CHATS ON PEWTER. 

By H. J. L. J. Masse, MA. 

CHATS ON POSTAGE STAMPS. 

By Fred. J. MEL\n[LLE. 

CHATS ON OLD JEWELLERY AND TRINKETS. 

By MacIver Percival. 

CHATS ON COTTAGE AND FARMHOUSE FURNITURE. 

By Arthur Hayden. 

CHATS ON OLD COINS. 

By Fred. W. Burgess. 

CHATS ON OLD COPPER AND BRASS. 

By Fred. W. Burgess. 

CHATS ON HOUSEHOLD CURIOS. 

By Fred. W. Burgess. 

CHATS ON OLD SILVER. 

By Arthur Hayden. 

CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS. 

By Arthur Davison Ficke. 

In Preparation. 
CHATS ON BARGAINS. 

By Charles E. Jerningham. 

CHATS ON OLD CLOCKS AND WATCHES. 

By Arthur Hayden. 

LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. 
NEW YORK : F. A. STOKES COMPANY. 



CHATS ON 
JAPANESE 
PRINTS 




HIROSHIGE: THE BOW-MOON. 

Size 15 X 7. Signed Hiroshige, hitsii. 



Frontispiece. 



Chats on 
Japanese Prints 



ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE 



WITH 56 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A COLOURED 
FRONTISPIECE 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






SEP \^ i9]5 



{All rights reserved) 



TO 

FREDERICK WILLIAM GOOKIN 

AND 

HOWARD MANSFIELD 

CUSTODIANS, APPRAISERS, AND LOVERS OF BEAUTY 

As chosen guests we may partake 
Of this strange hostel's ancient wine. 
For thirst no common drink can slake 
Tapsters of lineage divine 
Here pour sweet anodyne. 

The hurly-burly of the road, 
The turmoil of the carters' feet, 
Intrude not to this still abode 
Where travellers from the world-ends meet. 
And find the gathering sweet. 

Hence may perhaps some secret gleam 
FoUow along our onward way, 
From evening feast with lords of dream, 
As we go forth into the gi-ey 
To-morrow's cloudy day. 



PREFACE 

For assistance of many kinds in preparing this book 
the thanks of the author are gratefully offered to Mr. 
Frederick William Gookin, Mr. Howard Mansfield, 
Mr. William S. Spaulding, Mr. John T. Spaulding, 
Mr. Judson D= Metzgar, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, 
Mr. John Stewart Happer, Col. Henry Appleton, 
Mrs. Arthur Aldis, Mr. Ernest Oberholtzer, and Mr. 
Charles August Ficke. Though many obligations 
must perforce go unacknowledged, it would be im- 
proper to fail to state indebtedness to the writings 
of Von Seidlitz, Bing, Huish, Anderson, Strange, 
Binyon, Gookin, Kurth, Morrison, Happer, Koechlin, 
Vignier, Succo, Field, De Goncourt, Okakura, 
Edmunds, Perzynski, Wright, Fenollosa, and De 
Becker. 

Many collectors have kindly allowed their prints 
to be used for illustration in this book. That all the 
examples are from American collections is due to 
considerations of convenience, not to any notion of 
their superiority. All prints not credited to another 
owner are from the collection of the author. The 
other collections from which illustrations are drawn 
are as follows : — 

Spaulding (William S. and John T.), Boston, 
Massachusetts. 



12 PREFACE 

Gookin (Frederick W.), Chicago, Illinois. 

Mansfield (Howard), New York. 

Chandler (Charles H.), Evanston, Illinois. 

Metzgar (Judson D.), Moline, Illinois. 

Ainsworth (Miss Mary), Moline, Illinois. 

Four of the poems herein printed appeared first in 
The Little Review. A number of the others are 
from the author's book " Twelve Japanese Painters." 
Most of the photographs here reproduced were 
prepared by Mr. J. H. Paarman, Miss Sarah G. 
Foote-Sheldon, and Mr. J. D. Metzgar. 

Davenport, Iowa, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
PREFACE . . . . .II 



GLOSSARY . . . . . -19 

CHAPTIR 

I. PRELIMINARY SURVEY . . . • ^3 

II. CONDITIONS PRECEDING THE RISE OF PRINT 

DESIGNING . . . . .47 

III. THE FIRST period: THE PRIMITIVES . . 61 

IV. THE SECOND PERIOD : THE EARLY POLY- 

CHROME MASTERS . . . -125 

V. THE THIRD PERIOD : KIYONAGA AND HIS 

FOLLOWERS . . . . • 205 

VI. THE FOURTH PERIOD I THE DECADENCE . 255 

VII. THE FIFTH PERIOD : THE DOWNFALL . . 347 

VIII. THE COLLECTOR . . . .401 

INDEX ...... 449 

13 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



HiROSHiGE : The Bow-Moon . Frontispiece 

PLATE PAGE 

. I. MoRONOBU : A Pair of Lovers . . .71 

2. SuKENOBU : A Young Courtesan . . . -j-] 

, 3. KWAIGETSUDO : COURTESAN ARRANGING HER 

Coiffure {Spaulding Collection) . . .81 

4. Okumura Masanobu : Courtesans at Toilet . 93 

5. Okumura Masanobu : Standing Woman . 97 

6. Okumura Masanobu : Young Nobleman play- 

ing the Drum {^Chandler Collection) . .101 

7. toyonobu : two komuso, represented by the 

Actors Sanokawa Ichimatsu and Onoye 
KiKUGORO {Chandler Collection) . . .109 

8. TOYONOBU : Girl opening an Umbrella 

{Metzgar Collection) . . . .113 

TOYONOBU: Woman dressing . . .113 

9. KiYOMiTSU : The Actor Segawa Kikunojo as 

A Woman smoking . . . .117 

10. KlYOMITSU : WOMAN WITH BASKET HaT . .131 
KlYOMITSU : WOMAN COMING FROM BATH .121 

11. Harunobu : Young Girl in Wind -{Gookin 

Collection) . . . . - - i37 

12. Harunobu : Lady talking with Fan-vendor 

{Chandler Collection) . . . .141 



16 ILLUSTRATIONS 

PLATE PAGE 

13. Harunobu : Girl viewing Moon and Blossoms 

{Chandler Collection) . . . -145 

14. Harunobu : Courtesan detaining a passing 

Samurai . . . . . .149 

15. Harunobu : Shirai Gompachi disguised as a 

KoMuso . . . . . .153 

Harunobu : Girl playing with Kitten . 153 

16. KoRiusAi : Mother and Boy . . .161 
KoRiusAi : Two Lovers in the Fields ; Spring 

Cuckoo . . . . .161 

17. KoRiusAi : Two Ladies . . .165 
KORIUSAI : A Game of Tag . . .165 

18. Shigemasa : Two Ladies . . . .169 
KORIUSAI : A Courtesan .169 

19. Shunsho: An Actor of the Ishikawa School 

IN tragic role . . . .175 

20. Shunsho : The Actor Nakamura Matsuye as 

A Woman in White . . .179 

21. Shunsho : The Actor Nakamura Noshio in 

Female role {Gookin Collection) . .183 

22. BuNCHO : Courtesan and her Attendant in 

Snowstorm {^Mansfield Collection) . . .187 

23. Shunyei : An Actor . . . .191 

24. Shunko : The Actor Ishikawa Monnosuke 

IN Character . . . .195 

25. KiYONAGA : The Courtesan Hana-oji with 

Attendants . . . .211 

26. KiYONAGA : Lady with two Attendants {Gookin 

Collection) . . . . . .215 

27. KiYONAGA: The Courtesan Shizuka with At- 

tendants IN the Peony Garden at Asakusa 219 

28. KiYONAGA : Two Women and a Tea-house 

Waitress beside the Sumida River {Gookin 
Collection) ...... 223 



ILLUSTRATIONS 17 

PLATE PAGE 

29. KlYONAGA : YOSHITSUNE SERENADING THE LADY 

JORURIHIME {Spaulding Collection) . . 227 

30. KlYONAGA : Geisha with Servant carrying 

Lute-box ...... 231 

KlYONAGA : Woman painting her Eyebrows . 231 

31. Shuncho : Group at a Temple Gate {Mansfield 

Collection) . . . . . "235 

32. Shuncho : Two Ladies under Umbrella . 239 
Shuncho: The Courtesan Hana-oji ; the 

Sumida River seen through the Window 239 

33. Shuncho : Two Ladies in a Boat on the 

Sumida River . . . .243 

Yeisho : Two Courtesans after the Bath . 243 

34. KiTAO Masanobu : The Cuckoo {Spaulding 

Collection) . . . . . .251 

35. Yeishi : Three Ladies by the Seashore . 267 

36. Yeishi : Lady with Tobacco-pipe .271 

37. Yeishi : Interior opening on to the Seashore 

{Metzgar Collection) . . . .275 

38. Utamaro : Okita of Naniwaya, a Tea-house 

Waitress {Chandler Collection) . . . 283 

39. Utamaro : Two Courtesans . . .287 
*^4o. Utamaro: Woman Seated on a Veranda . 291 

= 41. Utamaro : A Youthful Prince and Ladies . 295 
J 42. Sharaku : The Actor Arashi Ryuzo in the 
role of one of the Forty-seven Ronin 
{Spaulding Collection) .... 301 

43. Sharaku : The Actor Ishikawa Danjuro in 

THE Role of Moronao .... 309 

44. Sharaku : The Actor Kosagawa Tsuneyo as 

A Woman in the Drama of the Forty- 
seven Ronin {Ainswortk Collection) . .313 

45. Choki : Courtesan and Attendant . .321 
Shunman : Two Ladies under a Maple-tree . 321 



18 ILLUSTRATIONS 

PLATE PAGE 

46. Choki : A Courtesan and her Lover . . 325 
Choki : A Geisha and her Servant carrying 

Lute- BOX . . . . . .325 

47. Toyokuni : Ladies and Cherry Blossoms in 

the Wind {Metzgar Collection) . . . 333 

48. Toyohiro : A Daimyo's Kite-party . .341 

49. HoKusAi : Fuji, seen across the Tama River, 

Province of Musashi . . . .361 

50. HoKUSAi : Fuji, seen from the Pass of Mishima, 

Province of Kahi . . . .367 

51. HoKUSAi : The Monkey Bridge; Twilight and 

Rising Moon . . . . .371 

52. HiROSHiGE : Homing Geese at Katada ; 

Twilight ...... 377 

53. Hiroshige: The Seven Ri Ferry, Kuwana, 

at the Mouth of the Kiso River ; Sunset 383 

54. Hiroshige : The Village of the Fuji Kawa ; 

Evening Snow . . .387 

55. Hiroshige : The Ommaya Embankment, on the 

SuMiDA River at Asakusa ; Evening . 391 

5^. Hiroshige : Bird and Flowers . . . 395 

Shunsho : An Actor as a Man carrying a 

Box ...... Cover 



. GLOSSARY 

Bern. — A delicate pink or red pigment of vegetable 
origin. 

Beni-ye. — A print in which dem is the chief colour 
used. The term is generally employed to 
describe all those two-colour prints which 
immediately preceded the invention of poly- 
chrome printing. 

Chuban. — A vertical print, size about ii x 8, some- 
times called the " medium size " sheet. 

Diptych. — A composition consisting of two sheets. 

Gauffrage. — Printing by pressure alone, without the 
use of a pigment, producing an embossed effect 
on the paper. 

Hashira-ye. — A very tall narrow print, size about 
28 X 5, used to hang on the wooden pillars 
of a Japanese house ; a pillar-print. 

Hashirakake. — See hashh-a-ye. 

Hoso-ye. — A small vertical print, size about 12x6. 

Kakemono. — A painting mounted on a margin of 
brocade ; hung by its top when in use, and 
rolled up when not in use. 

2 19 



20 GLOSSARY 

Kakemono-ye. — A very tall wide print, size about 

28 X 10. 
Key-block. — The engraved wooden plate from which 

the black outlines of the print were pro- 
duced. 
Kira-ye. — A print with mica background. 
Koban. — A vertical print slightly smaller than the 

Chuban (q.v.). 
Kurenai-ye. — A hand-coloured print in which beni 

is chiefly used. 
Mon. — The heraldic insignia used by actors and 

others as coat-of-arms ; generally worn on their 

sleeves. 
Nagaye. — See hashira-ye, 
Nishiki-ye. — Brocade picture — a term used at first 

to describe the brilliant colour-inventions of 

Harunobu, but now loosely applied to all 

polychrome prints. 
Oban. — A large vertical print, about 15 x 10 — the 

normal full-size upright sheet. 
Otsu-ye. — A rough broadsheet painting, of small size, 

on paper ; the precursor of the print. 
Pentaptycb. — A composition consisting of five 

sheets. 
Pillar-print. — See hashira-ye. 
SumL — Black Chinese ink. 
Sumi-ye. — A print in black and white only. 
Surimono. — A print, generally of small size and 

on thick soft paper, intended as a festival 

greeting or memento of some social occasion^ 



GLOSSARY 21 

Tan. — A brick-red or orange colour, consisting of 
red oxide of lead, 

Tan-ye. — A print in which tan is the only or chief 
colour used. Such prints, in which the tan was 
applied by hand, were among the earliest 
productions. 

Triptych. — A composition consisting of three sheets. 

Ucliiwa-ye. — A print in the shape of a fan. 

Umshi. — Lacquer. 

Urushi-ye. — A print in which lacquer is used to 
heighten the colour. The term is generally 
employed to describe only the early hand- 
coloured prints in which lacquer, colours, and 
metallic dust were applied to the printed 
black outline. 

Yokoye. — A large horizontal print, about lO x 15 — 
the normal full-size landscape sheet. 



PRELIMINARY 
SURVEY 

THE GENERAL NATURE 
OF JAPANESE PRINTS 

GROWTH OF INTEREST 
IN THEM 

THE TECHNIQUE OF 
THEIR PRODUCTION 

THEIR -ESTHETIC 
CHARACTERISTICS 



Bring forth, my friend, these faded sheets 
Whose charm our laboured utterance flies. 
Perhaps our later search repeats 
The groping of those scholars' eyes 

Who, ere the dawned Renaissant day, 
With dusked sight and doubtful hand, 
Bent o'er the pages of some grey 
Greek text they could not understand ; 

Drawn by the sense that there concealed 
Lay key to spacious realms unknown ; 
Held by the need that be revealed 
Forgotten worlds to light their own. 



CHAPTER I 

PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

The general nature of Japanese prints — Growth of interest in them — 
The technique of their production — Their aesthetic characteristics. 

That sublimated pleasure which is the seal of all the 
arts reaches its purest condition when evoked by a 
work in which the aesthetic quality is not too closely 
mingled with the every-day human. Poetry, because 
of its close human ties, is to a certain extent a 
corrupt art ; its medium is that base speech which 
we use for communicating information, and few are 
the readers whose minds can absolve words from the 
work-a-day obligation of conveying, first of all, mere 
tidings. Music, on the other hand, employing a 
medium wholly sacred to its own uses, starts with no 
such handicap ; its succession of notes awakens in 
the listener no expectation of an eventual body of 
facts to carry home. Between the two extremes lie 
the graphic arts. These are perhaps most fortunate 
when they deal with material not familiar to the 
spectator, for it is then that he most readily accepts 
them as designs and harmonies, without looking to 
them for a literal record of things only too well 
known to him. 

25 



26 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

The graphic art of an alien race has therefore an 
initial strength of purely aesthetic appeal that a 
native art often lacks. It moves free from the 
demands with which unconsciously we approach the 
art of our own people. It stands as an undiscovered 
world, of which nothing can logically be expected. 
The spectator who turns to it at all must come pre- 
pared to take it on its own terms. If it allures him, 
it will do so by virtue of those qualities of harmony, 
rhythm, and vision which in these strange surround- 
ings are more perceptible to him than in the art of 
his own race, where so many adventitious associa- 
tions operate to distract him. Like a man whom 
Mayfair bewilders with its fashions, he may find 
that fundamental verity, that humanity which he 
seeks only among the Gipsy beggars. 

Perhaps this theory best explains the impulse that 
has of late led many lovers of beauty to turn to the 
arts of Persia, China, and Japan for their keenest 
pleasure. Here, in unfamiliar environment, the 
fundamental powers of design stand forth free. 
Here the beautiful is discoverable for its own sake, 
liberated from the oppression of utility. 

Toward Japan this impulse has in our own day 
been strongly directed. The handicrafts of the 
Japanese people have charmed the Western world, 
possibly to an undue extent. On the other hand, 
the great classical schools of Japanese painting have 
unfortunately been difficult of access. But between 
the two, half craft and half art, lies the Japanese 
colour-print — a finer product than mere dexterous 
artizan work, and more accessible than the paintings 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 27 

of the classic masters. In the print many a Western 
mind has found its clearest intimation of the universal 
principles of beauty. 

During a period of a little more than a hundred 
years, roughly delimited by 1742 and 1858, there 
were produced in Japan large numbers of wood- 
engravings, printed in colours ; these have of late 
come to occupy an almost unique place in the esteem 
of European art-lovers. So great is the importance 
now attached to these works that the Japanese public 
of earlier days, for whose delectation they were 
designed, would be astounded could they witness it. 
Just as obscure Greek potters moulded for common 
use vases that are to-day treasured in the museums 
as paradigms of beauty, so the coloured broadsheets, 
whose immediate purpose was to give pleasure to 
the crowds of the Japanese capital, have taken in the 
course of years a distinguished rank among the 
beautiful things of all time. 

The day is passing when the love of these sheets 
can be looked upon as the badge of a cult, the secret 
delight of far-searching worshippers of the strange 
and exotic. Even did the collector desire, he could 
not long hide this light under a bushel ; and the 
Japanese print is swiftly becoming a general trea- 
sure. This is proper and natural. An understanding 
of the origin of this form of art makes its present 
popularity in Europe seem like the felicitous rounding 
of a circle begun on the other side of the world. 

It was in Yedo, the teeming capital of Japan, that 
the art of the colour-print flourished ; and the patron 
sought by the artists was primarily the common man. 



28 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

No art more purely national or more definitely 
popular and exoterical in its inception has ever 
existed. The subjects of the prints are alone 
enough to make this fact evident. In them appear 
the forms and faces of the popular actors in their 
admired roles, fashionable courtesans decked in all 
the splendour of their unhappy but far-famed days 
and nights, legendary heroes, dancers, wrestlers, and 
popular entertainers. In the matter of landscape, 
the scenes shown are the festival-crowded temples 
of Yedo, the sunlit tea-gardens and gay midnight 
boating-parties of the Sumida River, the great high- 
roads of national travel, the famous spots of popular 
recreation. Only rarely are there episodes from 
aristocratic life ; and the occasional occurrence of 
these has precisely the significance of a photograph 
of a royal house-party shown in a penny paper. 
The Yoshiwara, as the licensed quarter of Yedo is 
called, appears in these prints more often than do 
the garden-parties of noble ladies ; the vulgar theatre 
is shown, but not the classic No drama of the 
aristocracy ; it is a Japanese Montmartre, not a 
Japanese Faubourg St. Germain, that is revealed. 
The artist's sense of beauty subdues these riotous 
pleasures of the populace to the severe demands of 
a beautiful pattern ; but it is a whimsical vulgar 
world, a world of the people, a world of passing 
gaiety, that he portrays. 

The purposes of these pictures were various. " To 
some extent," says Mr. Frederick W. Gookin, " they 
were used as advertisements. Incidentally they 
served as fashion plates. Some were regularly pub- 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 29 

lished and sold in shops. Others were designed 
expressly upon orders from patrons, to whom the 
entire edition, sometimes a very small one, was 
delivered. The number struck from any block or 
set of blocks varied widely. Of the more popular 
prints many editions were printed, each one, as 
might be expected, inferior to those that preceded 
it. . . . Most of the prints were sold at the time of 
publication for a few sen. The finer ones brought 
relatively higher prices, and such prints as the great 
triptychs and still larger compositions by Kiyonaga, 
Yeishi, Toyokuni, Utamaro, and other leading artists 
could never have been very cheap. In general, how- 
ever, the price was small, and they were regarded as 
ephemeral things. Many were used to ornament the 
small screens that served to protect kitchen fires 
from the wind, and in this use were inevitably soiled 
and browned by smoke. Others, mounted upon the 
sliding partitions of the houses, perished in the fires 
by which the Japanese cities have been devastated ; 
or, if in houses that chanced safely to run the 
gauntlet of fires, typhoons, cloudbursts, and other 
mishaps, their colours faded, and their surfaces were 
rubbed until little more than dim outlines were left." 
The plebeian origin of the prints explains why the 
cultivated Japanese have not, as a rule, looked upon 
them with much enthusiasm. Only now, when the 
greatest print treasures have gone out of Japan, are 
a few Japanese collectors beginning to buy back at 
high prices works which they allowed to leave the 
country for a song. The admiration of Europe and 
America has awakened them to a realization of the 



30 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

distinction of the prints, in spite of the undistin- 
guished nature of their subjects ; and the day will 
come when the Japanese themselves will be the most 
formidable bidders at the sales of great Western 
collections. 

The interest of Western collectors in Japanese 
prints is of comparatively recent origin. As late as 
1 86 1 it was possible for a writer on Japan to regard 
them with blank indifference. There is a rare little 
book by Captain Sherard Osborne, printed in that 
year in London, called "Japanese Fragments." It 
contains six hand-coloured reproductions of prints 
and a number of uncoloured cuts, all from prints 
which Captain Osborne had purchased in Japan. In 
the following words he makes reference to Hiroshige, 
who is now generally ranked as one of the supreme 
landscape artists of all time : " Even the humble 
artists of that land have become votaries of the 
beautiful, and in such efforts as the one annexed 
strive to do justice to the scenery. Their apprecia- 
tion of the picturesque is far in advance, good souls, 
of their power of pencil, but our embryo Turner 
(i.e. Hiroshige) has striven hard . . ." etc. In 1861, 
perhaps, few people would have believed it possible 
that to-day many serious judges might question 
whether any product of European art has ever 
matched the designs of these " humble artists." 

The earliest of European collectors was, according 
to Mr. Edward F. Strange, a certain M. Isaac 
Titsingh, who died in Paris in 18 12. M. Titsingh 
had for fourteen years served the Dutch East India 
Company in Nagasaki ; and among his effects were 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 31 

" nine engravings printed in colours." Doubtless he 
had acquired them merely as curiosities, without any 
perception of their artistic importance. Mr. Strange 
notes that four prints were reproduced in Oliphant's 
" Account of the Mission of Lord Elgin to China 
and Japan" (1859); and, as we have seen, Osborne 
devoted some desultory attention to prints in 1861. 
These are, perhaps, the chief evidences of early 
European interest. 

Subsequently such events as the International 
Exhibition in London, 1862, the Paris Exposition 
of 1867 and that of 1878, and the Centennial Exhi- 
bition in Philadelphia, 1876, served to bring a few 
prints to the notice of Western amateurs. Particu- 
larly in Paris was intense interest in them aroused 
among painters and literary men. From 1889 to 
1 891, S. Bing was bringing out in Paris his magazine 
Le Japon Artistique, whose pages contain many fine 
reproductions of notable prints. In 1891, Edmond 
de Goncourt issued his volume on Utamaro. Other 
books followed rapidly. In 1895, Professor Ander- 
son issued his small but important monograph on 
"Japanese Wood Engraving." In 1896, Fenollosa's 
epoch-making catalogue, "Masters of Ukioye," was 
published in New York, establishing for the first 
time the foundations of all our present knowledge of 
this field, and pronouncing judgments from which 
the consensus of later opinion has, in the main, never 
departed. The same year brought forth de Gon- 
court's " Hokusai." Mr. Strange's "Japanese Colour 
Prints" appeared in 1897. In the same year, Von 
Seidlitz issued his " Geschichte des japanischen Far- 



32 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

benholzschnittes " (published in England as " A 
History of Japanese Colour Prints" in 1900), which 
remains to-day the most comprehensive and accurate 
single treatise on the subject. 

Of recent years, the growth of interest and the 
increase of books has been rapid. Eager collectors 
have scoured the world to bring to light new master- 
pieces ; Japan has been ransacked so thoroughly that 
the would-be purchaser can perhaps more wisely go 
to London or Paris or New York than to Tokyo or 
Kyoto in his search for prizes ; and the places of 
honour accorded these sheets in the portfolios of 
discriminating collectors and great museums leaves 
no doubt as to the esteem with which they are 
regarded. Values have been multiplied by tens 
and hundreds, so that to-day the supreme rarities 
among prints are beyond the reach of the ordinary 
purchaser. 

All this is due neither to accident nor to any 
strange freak of whimsical tastes. It has come 
about because the prints are in fact artistic trea- 
sures. Commonplace and trivial as the subjects of 
most of them are, they rise by virtue of the quality 
of their execution to a very high point — masterpieces 
of composition, triumphs of colour, monuments of 
the power of human genius to impose its sense of 
rhythm, form, and harmony on the appearances 
of the seen world. 

But as is true in the case of any art, the content 
of the colour-prints is not to be grasped at a first 
glance by the casual passer-by. Familiarity with 
the aims selected, the conventions employed, and 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 33 

the achievements possible is necessary before the 
specific charm of these works makes itself manifest. 
It is the experience of most print-lovers that, starting 
with perhaps a mere casual liking for a certain land- 
scape design, they progress gradually, in the course 
of years, to an unmeasured delight in the whole body 
of prints, and eventually find in them a unique source 
of repose and exaltation. 

There are certain peculiarities, common not only 
to prints but to Japanese art as a whole, that require 
a special effort of the Western mind before they 
become acceptable. The first and most vital of these 
is the absence of realism. " Throughout the course 
of Asian painting," writes Mr. Laurence Binyon, 
" the: idea that art is the imitation of Nature is un- 
known, or known only as a despised and fugitive 
heresy. ... A Chinese critic of the sixth century, 
who was also an artist, published a theory of aesthetic 
principles which became a classic and received uni- 
versal acceptance, expressing as it did the deeply 
rooted instincts of the race. In this theory, it is 
rhythm that holds the paramount place ; not, be it 
observed, imitation of Nature, or fidelity to Nature, 
which the general instinct of the Western races 
makes the root-concern of art. In this theory every 
work of art is thought of as an incarnation of the 
genius of rhythm manifesting the living spirit of 
things with a clearer beauty and intenser power than 
the gross impediments of complex matter allow to be 
transmitted to our senses in the visible world around 
us. A picture is conceived as a sort of apparition 
from a more real world of essential life." 



34 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

It will, therefore, be vain to expect in Japanese 
designs any production that will astonish the 
spectator by its life-likeness, it fidelity to an actual 
scene. Eastern art has never attempted to compete 
with the work of photography. Its function is the 
function which the European public grants to poets 
but not always to painters — the seeking out of 
subtle and invisible relations in things, the perception 
of harmonies and rhythms not heard by the common 
ear, the interpretation of life in terms of a finer and 
more beautiful order than practical life has ever 
known. 

All Asian art has recognized for centuries the fact 
that vision and imagination are the faculties by 
which the painter as well as the poet must grapple 
with reality. In the words of Mr. Binyon once 
more — " It is always the essential character and 
genius of the element that is sought for and insisted 
on : the weight and mass of water falling, the 
sinuous, swift curves of a stream evading obstacles 
in its way, the burst of foam against a rock, the 
toppling crest of a slowly arching billow ; and all in 
a rhythm of pure lines. But the same principles, the 
same treatment, are applied to other subjects. If it 
be a hermit sage in his mountain retreat, the artist's 
efforts will be concentrated on the expression, not 
only in the sage's features, but in his whole form, 
of the rapt intensity of contemplation ; toward this 
effect every line of drapery and of surrounding rock 
or tree will conspire, by force of repetition or of 
contrast. If it be a warrior in action, the artist will 
ensure that we feel the tension of nerve, the heat of 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 35 

blood in the muscles, the watchfulness of the eye, 
the fury of determination. That birds shall be seen 
to be, above all things, winged creatures rejoicing in 
their flight ; that flowers shall be, above all things, 
sensitive blossoms unfolding on pliant, up-growing 
stems ; that the tiger shall be an embodiment of 
force, boundless in capacity for spring and fury — this 
is the ceaseless aim of these artists, from which no 
splendour of colour, no richness of texture, no 
accident of shape diverts them. The more to con- 
centrate on this seizure of the inherent life in what 
they draw, they will obliterate or ignore at will half 
or all of the surrounding objects with which the 
Western painter feels bound to fill his background. 
By isolation and the mere use of empty space they 
will give to a clump of narcissus by a rock, or a 
solitary quail, or a mallow plant quivering in the 
wind, a sense of grandeur and a hint of the infinity 
of life." 

This almost symbolic quality is the chief element 
of the pleasure to be derived from Japanese art. i 
Japanese designs are metaphors ; they depict not 
any object, but remote and greater powers to which 
the object is related. Often the artist produces his 
effect by the exaggeration of certain aspects, or by 
expressing particular qualities in the terms of some 
kindred thing. If his subject happens to be an actor 
in some great and tragic role, he will not hesitate to 
prolong the lines of the drapery unconscionably, to 
give the effect of solemn dignity, slow movement, 
and monumental isolation. Westerners may smile 
at the distortion of such a figure : but they must 
3 



36 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

acknowledge that an atmosphere of lofty and special 
destiny surrounds the form, precisely because the 
artist has dared to use these devices. The Japanese 
artist will draw a woman as if she were a lily, a man 
as if he were a tempest, a tree as if it were a writhing 
snake, a mountain as if it were a towering giant. 
This is the very essence of poetical imagination ; and 
the result of it is to endow a picture with obscure 
suggestions and overtones of infinite power. Symbols 
of existence beyond themselves, these designs are 
charged with an almost mystical command upon the 
emotions of the spectator. Western art has employed 
such a method comparatively little in painting. In 
poetry it appears frequently. The poet, when he 
wishes to convey the impression of a beautiful woman, 
does not set out her features and her stature and all 
the details of her aspect. He tries to awaken some 
realization of her by a bold and fantastic leap of the 
imagination straight to the heart of the matter — he 
makes her a perfume, a light, a music, a memory of 
goddesses. 

The prosaic mind will never greatly care for work 
produced in accordance with this principle ; the 
conventions will seem distortions, the imaginative 
generalizations will seem inaccuracies, and the 
transcending of reality to shape a more universal 
and significant statement will appear nothing more 
than ineptitude in grappling with fact. But to the 
poetical mind, all these things will come with a 
unique and irresistible fascination ; and far more 
delightful than the novelty and interest of the scenes 
represented will be the manner of their representation. 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 37 

As one enters into the spirit of these paintings and 
prints, it is as if one saw the world from a new angle, 
or had acquired the power to assemble into new 
intellectual combinations those sensory impressions 
which our own art has taught us to combine in a 
manner now grown a little dull and stereotyped. 

Japanese art has certain conventions that are 
highly individual. Some of these may trouble and 
repel the Western eye. For example, the Japanese 
artist draws his figures without shadows, and makes 
no attempt to represent the play of light and shade 
over them. The scene is painted as if in a clear, 
cold vacuum, where the diffusion of illumination is 
almost perfectly uniform. In the Japanese view, a 
shadow is something ephemeral and transitory — a 
mere accident and illusion, and as such unworthy of 
perpetuation in art. The pattern of the object itself, 
freed from this momentary tyranny, should be the 
sole theme of the artist. Similarly, high-lights or 
chiaroscuro are not attempted ; nor is modelling by 
means of these employed. A universal flatness is 
the result — a result deliberately aimed at. 

Most of the European ideas of perspective are 
ignored in these works. In accordance with the 
ancient Chinese canon — based upon an imaginative 
and not upon a visual perception — the linear per- 
spective of the Japanese exactly reverses that of 
Western painting. In their system, parallel lines 
converge as they approach the spectator. Different 
planes of distance may be suggested merely by 
placing the remote plane higher up in the picture ; 
and sometimes no attempt is made to diminish the 



38 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

size of the figures in the upper plane. These devices 
may seem very naive to the European. But in 
aerial perspective — the power to give to objects a 
colouring appropriate to their relative distance from 
the eye — the Japanese indisputably employ the 
utmost subtlety. When these artists differ from 
European custom, it is not because of ignorance, 
but because their way seems to them the more 
expressive — the better adapted to the creation of 
those peculiar impressions of beauty which are their 
aim. The longer one examines the products of 
these alien theories of drawing, the less certain one 
is likely to be of the superiority of our more scientific 
Western conventions. 

In all Japanese art, the element of pure brushwork 
is of greater importance than in the art of Europe. 
The people, trained from childhood in the handling 
of the brush as a pencil for the drawing of the 
complex forms of written characters, acquire a facility 
and accuracy unknown in other lands. Fine cali- 
graphy is esteemed an art in itself. And the Japanese 
painter, whose life is devoted to further exercises 
with the brush, may achieve a unique degree of skill. 
His power to sweep, guide, and modulate the width 
and intensity of his line is developed into a sixth 
sense. He can make his brush-stroke smooth-flowing 
as a violin-note, or splintered as a broken branch, or 
wavering like the flow of a river, or coldly hard and 
sharp as flint ; sometimes it has the edge of a knife ; 
at other times it dies away into imperceptible grada- 
tions ; its blacks are dazzling in their intensity, its 
greys are like veils of mist. The mystery of the 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 39 

expression of pure personality in art is nowhere more 
strikingly exemplified than here. To the accustomed 
eye the line-work of the Japanese artist is vibrant 
with intimate connection between hand and spirit. 
This command of the brush, so perfect that the 
passion of the artist's soul flows out through it, is 
one of the vital characteristics of Japanese painting. 

The colour-print is one small and peculiar division 
of the larger field of Japanese pictorial design ; 
besides being subject to the general laws of Japanese 
aesthetics, it is distinguished by certain special 
characteristics that grow out of the nature of the 
technique employed. Of this technique, Mr. F. W. 
Gookin gives an illuminating exposition : — 

"None but the most primitive methods — or what 
from our point of view may seem such — were 
employed. The most wonderful among all the 
prints is but a ' rubbing ' or impression taken by 
hand from wood blocks. The artist having drawn 
the design with the point of a brush in outline upon 
thin paper, it was handed over to the engraver, who 
began his part of the work by pasting the design 
face downward upon a flat block of wood, usually 
cherry, sawn plank-wise as in the case of the blocks 
used by European wood-engravers in the time of 
Durer. The paper was then carefully scraped at the 
back until the design showed through distinctly in 
every part. Next, the wood was carefully cut away, 
leaving the lines in relief, care being taken to preserve 
faithfully every feature of the brush strokes with 
which the drawing was executed. A number of 
impressions were then taken in Chinese ink from this 



40 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

* key block ' and handed to the artist to fill in with 
colour. This ingenious plan, which is manifestly an 
outgrowth of the early custom of colouring the ink- 
prints (sumi-e) by hand, and which perhaps would 
never have been thought of had not the colour itself 
been an afterthought, enabled the artist to try many 
experiments in colour arrangement with a minimum 
amount of labour. The colour scheme and orna- 
mentation of the surfaces having been determined, 
the engraver made as many subsidiary blocks as 
were required, the parts meant to take the colour 
being left raised and the rest cut away. Accurate 
register was secured by the simplest of devices. A 
right-angled mark engraved at the lower right-hand 
corner of the original block, and a straight mark in 
exact line with its lower arm at the left, were 
repeated upon each subsequent block, and in printing, 
the sheets were laid down so that their lower and 
right-hand edges corresponded with the marks so 
made. The defective register which may be observed 
in many prints was caused by unequal shrinking or 
swelling of the blocks. In consequence of this, late 
impressions are often inferior to the early ones, even 
though printed with the same care, and from blocks 
that had worn very little. The alignment will usually 
be found to be exact upon one side of the print, but 
to get further out of register as the other side is 
approached. 

"The printing was done on moist paper with 
Chinese ink and colour applied to the blocks with 
flat brushes. A little rice paste was usually mixed 
with the pigments to keep them from running, and to 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 41 

increase their brightness. Sometimes dry rice flour 
was dusted over the blocks after they were charged. 
To this method of charging the blocks much of the 
beauty of the result may be attributed. The colour 
could be modified, graded, or changed at will, the 
blocks covered entirely or partially. Hard, mechanical 
accuracy was avoided. Impressions differed even when 
the printer's aim was uniformity. Sometimes in ink- 
ing the * key block/ which was usually the last one 
impressed, some of the lines would fail to receive the 
pigment, or would be overcharged. This was especi- 
ally liable to happen when the blocks were worn and 
the edges of the lines became rounded. A little 
more or a little less pigment sometimes made a 
decided difference in the tone of the print, and, it 
may be noted, has not infrequently determined the 
nature and extent of the discoloration wrought by 
time. 

" In printing, a sheet of paper was laid upon the 
block and the printer rubbed off the impression, 
using for the purpose a kind of pad called a baren. 
This was applied to the back of the paper and 
manipulated with a circular movement of the hand. 
By varying the degree of pressure the colour could 
be forced deep into the paper, or left upon the outer 
fibres only, so that the whiteness of those below the 
surface would shine through, giving the peculiar 
effect of light which is seen at its best in some of the 
surimono (prints designed for distribution at New 
Year's or other particular occasion) by Hokusai. 
Uninked blocks were used for embossing portions of 
the designs. The skill of the printer was a large 



42 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

factor in producing the best results. Even the 
brilliancy of the colour resulted largely from his 
manipulations of the pigments and various little 
tricks in their application. The first impressions 
were not the best, some forty or fifty having to be 
pulled before the blocks would take the colour 
properly. Many kinds of paper were used. For the 
best of the old prints it was thick, spongy in texture, 
and of an almost ivory tone. The finest specimens 
were printed under the direct personal supervision of 
the artists who designed them. Every detail was 
looked after with the utmost care. No pains were 
spared in mixing the tints, in charging the blocks, in 
laying on the paper so as to secure perfect register, 
in regulating the pressure so as to get the best 
possible impressions. Experiments were often tried 
by varying the colour schemes. Prints of important 
series, as for example Hokusai's famous ' Thirty-six 
Views of Fuji,' are met with in widely divergent 
colourings." 

The results produced by this technique, as it was 
employed in the great period of the art, have no 
parallel. When Diirer, in the fifteenth century, 
brought wood and steel engraving to such brilliant 
perfection, he determined the future history of 
European engraving, fixing the line of greatest 
development in the region of black-and-white, where, 
except for sporadic excursions of debatable merit, it 
has continued ever since. Fortunately, in Japan, 
colour and line did not part company, but in com- 
bination progressed toward a unique triumph. 

A print produced by this technique is simply a 



PRELIMINAKY SURVEY 43 

sheet of paper upon which are impressed, by means 
of hand-charged wood blocks, a series of patches of 
colour that combine into a design. In general, each 
of these patches is flat and unshaded ; its edges are 
sharp, definite, bounded by a line as distinct as the 
line of the lead used in stained glass. In the print, 
as in the stained-glass window, only major lines and 
important colour-masses can be shown ; thus elimina- 
tion of the incidental and selection of what is vital 
are imperatively demanded of the designer. Salient 
curves and expressive outlines are the essential 
requisite. One reason why these prints seem classic 
is that they are purged of the thousand unimportant 
and meaningless gradations of tone that are easy to 
use in a painting and impossible here. Singular 
purity and loftiness of effect is the result, together 
with a certain abstract aloofness from reality that has 
a high aesthetic value. 

Into the drawing of these few lines, and into the 
construction of these few flat colour-spaces, went all 
the artist's sense of proportion and rhythm, grace 
and dignity, movement and tone. On the flat wall 
of his printed sheet he devised a pattern that should 
weave, out of figures and objects, a decorative design 
upon whose harmonious mosaic the eye would 
willingly linger. There he played his music to 
allure and beguile and absorb the spectator. 

Like his fellow-painters of all Asia, the print- 
designer did not feel that literal accuracy greatly 
concerned him. If the figures moved with a stately 
godlike grace in rhythmic procession, what matter 
if they were taller or shorter than real beings ? If 



44 CHATS ON JAPANESE PKINTS 

their faces were expressive of a noble calm or a 
sublime fury, why ask for a detailed mirroring of 
a real face? If the landscape was beautiful, was 
it important that the real scene could never look 
exactly thus ? 

As an example of the curious conventions that 
dominate this art, the observer will note the way 
in which heads are drawn by these artists. With 
very rare exceptions, the angle from which all the 
heads are seen is the same. In the print, as in 
the Egyptian wall-carvings, the head is held in a 
poise dictated by a traditional formula. The face 
is turned half-way between profile and full-face ; the 
nose approaches but does not intersect the line of 
the cheek ; the outline of the nose is shown, and 
also the broad sweep of the brow, while at the same 
time both eyes are visible. For two centuries, with 
only occasional variations, this formula for drawing 
the face persisted ; and in the submission to this 
wisely chosen type — admirably adapted as it was 
to exhibit most expressively the whole map of the 
features — is revealed something of that willingness 
to accept discipline, style, and conventionalization 
which in these artists went side by side with so much 
originality. 

A magic world — a pure creation of the imagination 
in its search for beauty ! This convention in the 
drawing of the faces has much to do with the unreal 
quality we find there. Something in the repetition 
and uniformity of the heads produces a delicate 
visionary impression, a trance-like mood — as does 
the rhythm of poetry or music. Under its spell 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY 45 

the emotion of the spectator comes forth free from 
its daily bonds and preoccupations, in the liberation 
that only art can give. 

To these regions of pure aesthetic experience the 
amateur turns with delight — not only as an escape 
from practical life, but as an escape from much that 
is known to the Western world as art. The childish 
mind loves pictures that tell a story ; but the more 
sophisticated intelligence goes to a work of art for 
those elements which lie far beyond the region of 
episodic narration — elements that are allied to the 
principles of geometry, the laws of motion, the 
excursions of pure music, the visions of religious 
faith. Though these manifestations are difficult to 
correlate, they all arise from one fountainhead ; and 
the best of the Japanese prints lie very close to 
the source of the stream. 



11 

CONDITIONS 
PRECEDING THE RISE 
OF PRINT-DESIGNING: 

THE BIRTH OF 

THE UKIOYE SCHCX)L 



CHAPTER II 

CONDITIONS PRECEDING THE RISE OF PRINT- 
DESIGNING: THE BIRTH OF THE UKIOYE 
SCHOOL 

At the outset of the seventeenth century was in- 
augurated the Tokugawa Dynasty of Shoguns or 
military dictators, by the victories of the great 
warrior and statesman lyeyasu over rival factions. 
Upon acquiring the Shogunate — a position which 
had for long eclipsed the power of the Emperor — 
lyeyasu laid a wise but iron hand upon Japan, 
forcing all departments of industry, society, and 
even art into rigid forms whose pattern was laid 
down by his far-seeing mind. The same policy 
guided his successors of the Tokugawa Dynasty ; 
so that during the whole period of print production 
Japan was a land of gorgeous feudal splendour, 
regulated by inflexible rules of conduct and manners 
that amounted almost to caste regulations. 

That subtle interpreter of the ideals of the East, 
the late Kakuzo Okakura, thus analyses the state of 
society at that time : " The Tokugawas," he writes, 
"in their eagerness for consolidation and discipline, 
crushed out the vital spark from art and life. . . . 



50 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

In their prime of power, the whole of society — and 
art was not exempt — was cast in a single mould. 
The spirit which secluded Japan from all foreign 
intercourse, and regulated every daily routine, from 
that of the daimyo to that of the lowest peasant, 
narrowed and cramped artistic creativeness also. 
The Kano academies of painting — filled with the 
disciplinary instincts of lyeyasu — of which four 
were under the direct patronage of the Shogun and 
sixteen under the Tokugawa Government, were con- 
stituted on the plan of regular feudal tenures. Each 
academy had its hereditary lord, who followed his 
profession, and, whether or not he was an indifferent 
artist, had under him students who flocked from 
various parts of the country, and who were, in their 
turn, official painters to different daimyos in the 
provinces. After graduating at Yedo (Tokyo), it 
was de rigueur for these students, returning to the 
country, to conduct their work there on the methods, 
and according to the models given them during their 
instruction. The students who were not vassals 
of daimyos were, in a sense, hereditary fiefs of the 
Kano lords. Each had to pursue the course of 
studies laid down by Tannyu and Tsunenobu, and 
each painted and drew certain subjects in a certain 
manner. From this routine, departure meant ostra- 
cism, which would reduce the artist to the position 
of a common craftsman." 

Yet it would convey a wrong impression of the 
Tokugawa period to suggest that bureaucratic tight- 
ness of regime was its sole or most vital character- 
istic. The age was marked as strongly by its 



THE RISE OF PRINT-DESIGNING 51 

expansive powers as by the restraints that attempted 
to direct them. For in this epoch, the common 
people, set apart in a class distinct from the warriors 
and aristocracy, rose to a vigour and cultivation that 
was almost a new thing in Japanese history. " It 
was," writes FenoUosa, "like the rise of the industrial 
classes in the free cities of Europe in those middle 
centuries when the old feudal system was breaking 
up. There, too, could be seen armoured lords of 
castles flourishing side by side with burghers and 
guilders. It is the same duality which forms the 
keynote of Tokugawa culture taken as a whole. 
. . . The keynote of Tokugawa life and art is 
their broad division into two main streams — the 
aristocratic and the plebeian. These two flowed on 
side by side with comparatively little intermingling. 
On the one side select companies of gentlemen and 
ladies congregated in gorgeous castles and yashikis, 
daimyos and samurai, exercising, studying their own 
and China's past, weaving martial codes of honour, 
surrounding themselves with wonderful utensils of 
lacquer, porcelain, embroidery, and cunningly wrought 
bronze ; and on the other side great cities like Osaka, 
Nagoya, Kyoto, and Yedo, swarming with manu- 
facturers, artizans, and merchants, sharing little in 
the castle privileges, but devising for themselves 
methods of self-expression in local government, 
schools, science, literature, and art." 

Examining into the history of Japanese colour- 
prints, one must leave entirely aside the interesting 
and sometimes sublime art of the cultivated and 
aristocratic classes and their tradition-hallowed 
4 



52 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

schools of painting. The prints were solely the 
product of the popular school ; they were in a way 
allied to those delicate Japanese handicrafts, such as 
bronze and lacquer, which are characteristically the 
output of the common people. 

The Tokugawa regime was one of national peace. 
The country, long disturbed by both internal and 
external wars, settled down at last under the strong 
Tokugawa banner to two centuries and a half of 
tranquillity. The vital activity of this time was not 
diffused and scattered over the whole country, but 
was chiefly centred upon one spot, the ancient 
" Capital of the East," Yedo, now called Tokyo. 
Here, under the dominance of the great lyeyasu, the 
life of the empire was brought to a focus. lyeyasu 
forced all the great nobles, living customarily on their 
estates scattered throughout the empire, to come to 
Yedo and remain there in residence for at least half 
of each year, in order that he might keep his hand 
upon them and prevent them from springing up to 
rival power. The natural effect of this regulation 
was to give Yedo a supreme importance in the realm, 
and to cultivate in Yedo the growth of every form of 
popular activity. There, in the metropolitan centre, 
all the agencies of pleasure burst into luxurious 
bloom ; the tea-houses, the theatres, the riverside 
gardens, and the Yoshiwara or courtesans' quarter, 
all took on a new and alluring splendour ; and Yedo 
became the great city and the great art centre of 
Japan. 

At this time, aristocratic art, in the hands of the 
later generations of the Kano School of painters, 



THE RISE OF PRINT-DESIGNING 53 

was not only largely inaccessible to the common 
people, but was also no longer in its prime. The 
giants of the Kano School were long since dead. In 
the place of their vigorous inspiration only super- 
ficiality and formalism remained. Long since dead 
was that lofty idealistic art, best known to us in the 
work of Sesshu, which had distinguished the pre- 
ceding Ashikaga Period — an art which, to quote 
Mr. Laurence Binyon, " deals little in human figures 
and has no concern with the physical beauty of 
men and women, contenting itself mainly with the 
contemplation of wide prospects over lake and 
mountain, mist and torrent, or a spray of sensitive 
blossoms trembling in the air." Yet even though 
the earlier greatness of the aristocratic schools of 
painting was passing or had passed in this seven- 
teenth and eighteenth century epoch, still the authority 
derived by the Kano painters from their connection 
with the court of the Shogun gave them dictator- 
ship over matters of art ; and their academy imposed 
its technique upon all aspirants for the favour of 
the aristocracy. The rival school of the Tosas, 
associated closely with the court of the Emperor in 
Kyoto, was no less careful of tradition and discipline. 
Thus the moribund art of the upper classes stood 
alone like a little island, shut out from the art of the 
people, unable to influence it or to be influenced 
by it. 

Therefore Japan, at the time when the popular 
school came into existence, was in a curious state : 
subject to a strict disciplinary system that kept the 
common people and the aristocracy apart ; enjoying 



54 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

a period of peace and a centralization of resources 
that gave the common people in their isolation a 
favourable opportunity to develop a culture of their 
own ; and suffering from a growing degeneracy in 
the classical schools of painting that might be counted 
on to drive at least an occasional aristocratic artist 
out into the ranks of the people were any interesting 
opportunity offered there. 

At this juncture, early in the seventeenth century, 
there arose in Yedo a new movement which later was 
to produce the colour-print. 

This new movement was called the Ukioye School. 
The real gap between it and the older classical 
schools has been by many writers grossly exagger- 
ated. One might well gather from them that the 
Ukioye artists were the first in all Japanese art to 
draw subjects selected from real life and to paint 
with vivid humanism. This is by no means the 
fact. All the subjects treated by the Ukioye 
painters had been at some time used by the painters 
of the older schools ; and certainly the usual sub- 
ject of the Kano or Tosa painter was as real and 
vivid to him as were any of the themes of the 
popular artists to these creators. Each painted his 
customary environment — what was closest to his 
experience and dearest to his aesthetic perceptions : 
on the one hand, traditionary and religious figures, 
scenes from poetry, reflections of Chinese or old 
Japanese art ; and on the other hand, the pulsing 
life of Yedo streets, the tea-gardens of the Sumida 
River, the theatres, and the brilliant houses of 
pleasure. Yet having suggested that the gap between 



THE BIRTH OF THE UKIOYE SCHOOL 55 

the two was not immeasurable, we may grant that it 
was nevertheless real. Ukioye concerned itself with 
contemporary plebeian life, its shows and festivals 
and favourites of the hour, to an extent alien to 
the more restrained and almost monastic tradition 
of the older art. Ukioye means " Passing-world 
Picture " ; there is implied in the word a reproach 
and an accusation of triviality. It suggests values 
not recognized by that orthodox Buddhistic attitude 
of contemplation which regards life as a show of 
shadows, a region of temporal desire and illusion 
and misery, a vigil to be endured only by keeping 
fixedly before the vision pictures of the desireless 
calm of Nirvana. But no such profound philosophy 
of despair and abnegation as this could find real 
root in the hearts of a lively populace like that of 
Japan ; in that nation, the lonely minds of seques- 
tered aristocrats alone could give it more than nominal 
habitation. The Ukioye School, since it was a 
popular school, remained as unshadowed by Buddhism 
as modern French poster-art is by Christianity ; and 
the distance between the spiritual attitudes of Giotto 
and Aubrey Beardsley is no greater than that between 
the attitudes of Kanaoka and Utamaro. All that 
aureole of moral idealism which hallowed the classical 
Japanese art was abandoned by the popular school 
for a frank acceptance of the joy of the world and its 
enthralling lures. 

The style adopted by the new school in portraying 
the life of the multitude allowed itself a certain keen 
realism, often tinged with humour and sometimes 
with mild obscenity. This realism appears only 



56 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

occasionally, and it is generally so completely sub- 
ordinated to the decorative impulse that realism is 
the last word by which a Western observer would 
describe it. Only by way of contrasting it with 
the idealism of the older schools can one thus classify 
the arbitrary attitudes, mask-life faces, and fanciful 
colour schemes of Ukioye. This arbitrariness indi- 
cates another characteristic of the new manner. It 
was a flippant style which took nothing seriously 
except itself. Its technique departed from the sacred 
traditions of Kano and Tosa brushwork and the 
inheritance of Chinese painting canons. It developed 
a novel use of clear, hard outline, unrestrained sweep, 
brilliantly fresh colour, and strong contrast, that 
relied on no precedent for their appeal and awakened 
no sanctioning echo from the classic masters. 

Not unnaturally the aristocracy were repelled by 
the plebeian and vulgar nature of the subjects of 
the new school. Their sensibilities were injured 
by the throwing overboard of traditions of style 
that stretched back through many centuries to the 
founders of the art in China, and by the genuine 
lack of distinction in the spiritual attitude and out- 
look of many of these new painters. The modern 
European, bred of a different artistic lineage, may 
regard these objections as negligible ; but he must 
remember that it is perhaps his own ignorance of 
Japanese classics that makes him so tolerant ; and 
he may properly hesitate to condemn hastily the 
aristocratic Japanese opinion. 

The aristocratic opinion is readily comprehensible. 
The Ukioye School without doubt lacks that almost 



THE BIRTH OF THE UKIOYE SCHOOL 57 

religious idealism by which the earlier Japanese 
schools of painting attained a subtlety perhaps ex- 
cessively rarefied, an allusiveness almost too remote, 
a sublimation of intangible spiritual values that very 
nearly reaches the vanishing-point. No such serene 
cultivation of feeling is to be found in the Ukioye 
painters. " Great art is that before which we long 
to die," says Okakura ; and the overstrained intensity 
of his words conveys to the Westerner some concep- 
tion of the passionate spirituality which the cultivated 
Japanese desires and finds in the works of the older 
painters. The Japanese connoisseur misses in Ukioye 
that exaltation which, in the creations of Sesshu 
or Yeitoku or Kanaoka, leads him up to heights 
whence he surveys mountain and lake lying like a 
visionary incantation before him, or feels the giant 
loneliness of pines upon a snowy crest, or enters into 
the ineffable spirit of the white goddess Kwannon 
meditating in a measureless void of clouds and 
streams. 

These things are not to be found in Ukioye — these 
ultimate reaches of the Oriental spirit ; but there is 
here a more human and lovable beauty, and a power 
of design no less notable than that of the aristocratic 
masters. 

It must be granted that the colour-prints of this 
school constitute the fullest and most characteristic 
expression ever given to the temper of the Japanese 
people. Asia — the region of measureless, overwhelm- 
ing spaces, innumerable lives, and immemorial 
antiquity — Asia speaks in the older paintings ; but 
in the amiable prints, the one voice is the defined. 



58 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

circumscribed, and beguiling voice of Japan. The 
colour-print constitutes almost the only purely 
Japanese art, and the only graphic record of popular 
Japanese life. Therefore it may be regarded as the 
most definitely national of all the forms of expression 
used by the Japanese — an art which they alone in the 
history of the world have brought to perfection. 

The beginnings of the Ukioye School antedated 
by many years the beginnings of colour-printing. 
Iwasa Matabei, the founder of the school, was born in 
1578 and died in 1650. At first it was the aristocracy 
that applauded this pioneer, who was not yet alienated 
from them ; then some vital element in Matabei's 
manner kindled enthusiasm outside this circum- 
scribed region and set in motion the forces which 
eventually resulted in a popular school of art. 

After Matabei, the Ukioye School did not take any 
immediate turn toward notable development. In 
fact, it is doubtful whether its importance could have 
been far-reaching had its activity been always, as in 
its earliest days, confined to painting. It was, how- 
ever, the destiny of the school to come into a relation 
with the hitherto undeveloped art of wood-engraving ; 
and its alliance with this popular medium increased 
a thousand-fold the breadth of its appeal and the 
force of its sway. 

The art of wood-engraving in Japan originated 
some time between the twelfth and fourteenth cen- 
turies. Legend associates the first use of it with the 
great priest Nichiren, who lived from 1222 to 1282. 
Ryokin, also a priest, produced a woodcut which 
is dated 1325. No date earlier than this last can 



THE BIRTH OF THE UKIOYE SCHOOL 59 

be fixed upon with any confidence. The few speci- 
mens of early woodcuts that have survived are pious 
Buddhistic representations of religious paintings or 
statues, which were probably sold to pilgrims as 
mementoes of their visit to some famous shrine. 
In artistic merit these earliest woodcuts have no 
interest ; their importance is entirely historical. 

By the end of the sixteenth century the process of 
wood-engraving had come into use as a means of 
illustrating books. From this time on, mythological, 
romantic, and legendary works, such as the " Ise 
Monogatari," were frequently so embellished. Most 
of the designs were very crude, and the cutting of the 
wood blocks displayed only elementary skill. These 
early books were in no way connected with the 
Ukioye School, which they in fact antedated ; they 
were wholly the product of the old classical tradi- 
tion. Contemporaneously with them were pro- 
duced fairly vigorous but clumsy broadsides, repre- 
senting historical scenes. Occasionally a few spots 
of coarse colour were applied by hand to these 
designs. 

By the middle of the seventeenth century there 
began to appear illustrated books in which the rudi- 
mentary elements of artistic pictorial feeling are 
visible. A few have a slight Ukioye cast. Not 
until the last quarter of the century, however, did 
wood-engraving achieve the dignity of a fine art 
and the scope of a popular method of expression. 
That it then did so was due to the genius of 
Moronobu, an Ukioye painter, the first of the great 
print-designers. 



Ill 

THE FIRST 

PERIOD : 

THE PRIMITIVES 

FROM MORONOBU 

TO THE INVENTION 

OF POLYCHROME PRINTING 

0660-1764) 



CHAPTER III 

THE FIRST PERIOD : THE PRIMITIVES 

From Moronobu to the Invention of Polychrome 
Printing (1660-1764). 

General Characteristics. 

The Primitive Period, first of those epochs into 
which the history of Japanese prints may be roughly 
divided, begins about 1660 with the appearance of 
the work of Moronobu. The period ends a century 
later when, after many experiments, the technique 
of the art had been developed from the black-and- 
white print to the full complexity of multi-colour 
printing. 

The commonly accepted name of " the Primitives " 
requires some explanation when applied to these 
artists lest it create the impression that we are deal- 
ing with designers in whose works are to be found 
the naive efforts of unsophisticated and groping 
minds. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 
Thousands of years of artistic experience and tradi- 
tion lay back of these productions ; and the level of 
aesthetic sophistication implied in them was high. 
The word Primitive applies to these men only in so 



64 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

far as they were workers in the technique of wood- 
engraving. As producers of prints they were indeed 
pioneers and experimenters ; but as designers they 
were part of a long succession that had reached full 
maturity centuries earlier. 

Whether it be that a new technical form, like an 
unexplored country, tends to exclude from entrance 
all but bold and vigorous spirits, or whether it be 
that the stimulus of difficulty and discovery inspirits 
the adventurer with keener powers, these Primitives 
were as a group surpassed by none of their successors 
in force and lofty feeling. They seized the freshly 
available medium with an exuberance of vitality that 
had not yet lost itself in the deserts of a fully 
mastered technique. 

" These Primitives," says Von Seidlitz, " are now 
held in far higher esteem than formerly. We 
recognize in them not only forerunners, but men of 
heroic race, who, without being able to claim the 
highest honours paid to the gods, still exhibit a 
power, a freshness, and a grace that are hardly met 
with in the same degree in later times. Despite the 
imperfections that necessarily attach to their works, 
despite their lack of external correctness, their 
limitations to few and generally crude materials, and 
their conventionalism, there clings to their work a 
charm such as belongs to the works neither of the 
most brilliant nor of the pronouncedly naturalistic 
periods. For, in the singleness of their efforts to 
make their drawing as expressive as possible, with- 
out regard to any special kind of beauty or truth, 
these Primitives discover a power of idealization and 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 65 

a stylistic skill which, at a later period and with 
increased knowledge, are quite unthinkable." 

To the new Ukioye School these Primitives gave 
the first great opening for popularity. Their broad- 
sides and albums disseminated among the millions 
of Yedo the product of the new and vigorous art- 
impulse. They were the river-streams through which 
the lake reservoirs of Ukioye art returned to the sea 
of popular life whence the waters had come. 

Fenollosa's picture of the popular life during a 
portion of this Primitive Period, the Genroku Era 
(1688-1703), is not without its significance in this 
connection. " This was the day when population 
and arts had largely been transferred to Yedo, and 
both people and samurai were becoming conscious 
of themselves. The populace of the new great city, 
already interested in the gay pleasures of the tea- 
houses and the dancing-girls' quarter, were just 
elaborating a new organ for expression, namely the 
vulgar theatre, with plays and acting adapted to 
their intelligence. They had just caught hold, too, 
of the device of the sensational novel. Now here 
was an army of young samurai growing up in the 
neighbouring squares, who were just on the qui vive 
to slip out into these nests of popular fun. For the 
time being, freedom for both sides was in the air. 
Anybody could say or do what he pleased. Fashions 
and costumes were extravagant. Everybody joined 
good-naturedly in the street dances. It was like a 
world of college boys out on a lark ; to speak more 
exactly, it had much resemblance to the gay, roister- 
ing, unconscious mingling of lords and people in the 



66 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Elizabethan days of Shakespeare, before the duality 
of puritan and cavalier divided them." 

The subjects depicted by the Primitive artists for 
the pleasure of this populace are drawn from the 
flourishing life thus described. First and foremost, 
the stage is represented ; and the greatest prints of 
this period are, as a rule, the single figures of actors 
portrayed in their roles. But social and domestic 
scenes also find place here ; and all the play of 
fashion and recreation, the occupations and amuse- 
ments of the ladies, the boating-parties and tea-house 
scenes, the street and the festival, appear in brilliant 
succession. 

In the general style of their designs the Primitives 
were all controlled by one fundamental aim — that of 
decoration. This dominating quality appears most 
clearly in the large actor-prints which we associate 
with the names of Kwaigetsudo, Kiyonobu, Masanobu, 
and Toyonobu. To an extent greater than the 
artists of any succeeding period they eschewed 
minuteness of detail and accuracy of representation, 
sacrificing these things for the sake of achieving 
broad decorative effects combined with vigorous 
movement. A certain unique simplicity and 
grandeur in the spacial and linear conceptions of 
these men gives to the whole Primitive Period a 
Titanic character that distinguishes it. In the best 
works of this time the stylistic finish of the drawing 
is masterful. It translates motion into sweeping 
caligraphic lines, and creates imposing calm by the 
poise and balance of severe black-and-white masses. 
Just as in opera the flow of music induces in the 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 67 

auditor a state of semi-trance that makes him 
oblivious to the patent absurdities and unrealities of 
the action, so in these pictures the rhythmic flow of 
the composition lifts the consciousness of the spectator 
to a plane where it ceases to take note of the incorrect 
report of Nature and loses itself in the enjoyment of 
the noble decorative conceptions that actuate the 
creating hand. 

A profound formalism dominates these works. 
The figures are purely one-dimensional ; the picture 
is a flat pattern of lights and darks bounded by the 
sharp outline of great curves. In the actor-pieces no 
real portraiture of the actor as an individual is 
essayed ; the artist's aim is rather to convey some 
sense of the dynamic power of the role in which the 
actor appears. He succeeds so well that his pictures, 
though not representations of individuals, stand as 
abstract symbols of grace or of power. 

Historically, one of the chief interests in this period 
centres upon the notable developments in technique. 
Wood-engraving was, as we have seen, already known 
when the period opened ; but it had not yet been 
subjected to the purposes of the artist. Confined 
almost exclusively to crude book illustrations, it had 
as little artistic significance as the cheap hand- 
painted sketches called otsu-ye, which, produced by 
hundreds, were sold for the amusement of the 
populace. 

With the advent of the gifted Moronobu, the book- 
illustration was transformed into an important and 
beautiful creation. Going further, Moronobu and his 
successors produced single-sheet prints of large size, 
5 



68 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

in black and white only, that served all the purposes 
of paintings and were capable of being reproduced 
without limit. These black-and-white prints were 
called sumi-ye (Plate i). Books and albums by 
him appeared at various earlier dates, but the 
first of his single-sheet prints was issued about 
1670. 

The second step in development came with the 
realization that the brilliant colour of the older 
otsu-ye could easily be imparted to the new prints. 
So some of the sheets of Moronobu and his contem- 
poraries were coloured by hand with orange, yellow, 
green, brown, and blue, somewhat after the manner 
used by the painters of the classical Kano School. 
In the actor-prints there began to appear, shortly 
after 1700, solid masses of orange-red pigment. 
These sheets were called tan-ye, from the tan or 
red lead used in them. About 17 10 citrine and 
yellow were used in connection with the /^;2 (Plate 2). 
By 171 5 or a little later, beni, a delicate red colour of 
vegetable origin, was discovered, and almost entirely 
replaced the cruder tan. Prints thus coloured were 
called kurenai-ye. 

About 1720 it was found that the intensity of 
the colouring could be enhanced by the addition 
of lacquer. Red, yellow, blue, green, brown, and 
violet were used in brilliant combination ; and their 
tone was heightened by painting glossy black lacquer 
on the black portions of the picture, and sprinkling 
some of the colours with sparkling powdered gold or 
mother-of-pearl. Such prints were called urushi-ye, 
or lacquer-prints (Plate 5). 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 69 

These various methods of hand-colouring prevailed 
up to about the year 1742. At this time, a method 
was perfected by which two colour-blocks could be 
used in printing ; and the true colour-print came 
into existence. Masanobu is generally credited with 
being the inventor of the new technique. The first 
colours employed were green and the red known as 
beni\ and from this the prints derived their common 
name of beni-ye (Plate 6). Later many varieties 
of colour were tried. To some print-lovers, these 
two-colour prints seem unequalled in beauty. 

About 1755 a method was devised by which a 
third colour-block could be employed, and blue was 
the colour at first selected to accompany the original 
green and red, Then blue, red, and yellow were 
used, and other variations ; and in the hands of such 
men as Toyonobu and Kiyomitsu, rich decorative 
effects resulted (Plate 7). 

To the end of the period hand-colouring was still 
occasionally used for large and important pieces such 
as pillar-prints ; but the old method lost ground 
steadily, and the day of the polychrome-print was 
at hand. 

To give in more detail the history of this period, 
the strict chronological method must be abandoned ; 
and each of the important artists must be taken up 
in turn as an independent creator. 

MORONOBU. 
Hishikawa Moronobu, born probably in 1625, was 
the son of a famous embroiderer and textile designer 
who lived in the province of Awa. Moronobu worked 



70 



CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



at the trade of his father during his youth, obtaining 
thus a training in decorative invention that is trace- 
able in all his later work. Upon the death of his 
father, he came to Yedo and took up the study of 
painting under the masters of the Tosa and Kano 
Schools. Gradually, however, the Ukioye style, in- 
troduced by Matabei some years 
before, became his chosen province ; 
and from painting he turned to 
-^J^^ the designing of woodcuts for 

^T book illustrations and broadsheets. 

'^ Later in life he became a monk ; 

« .^^ and died probably in 1695, though 

/ ' I some authorities say 17 14. 

Moronobu's importance in the 
history of Japanese prints is two- 
fold. He inspirited the Ukioye 
School with a new vitality ; and he 
turned wood-engraving into an art. 
The Ukioye movement, when 
Moronobu appeared, was still in- 
determinate. A great personality 
was needed to crystallize the 
vague tendencies then in solution. 
This Moronobu accomplished ; and 
the far-reaching effect of his work was due to the 
fact that he did not confine his work to painting, but 
took up the hitherto unexplored field of woodcuts. 
As we have seen in the previous chapter, there had 
been produced up to Moronobu's time no illustrated 
book that could lay claim to artistic value. The 
little that had been done in this field was crude 




HISHIKAWA 

MORONOBU. 







7 / I •■ 



,1 '/ 



71 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 73 

artizan work without charm. Now Moronobu seized 
this medium and transformed it. Into his woodcuts 
he poured that powerful sense of design which he so 
notably possessed, creating real pictures of striking 
decorative beauty. These books and prints, widely 
circulated, carried to the eyes of the masses a new 
and delightful diversion, spreading far and near the 
contagious fascination of this lively Ukioye manner 
of drawing and awakening in the populace a thirst 
for more of these productions. Matabei had devised 
the new popular style, but it was Moronobu who 
threw open the gates of this region to the people. 

Moronobu's first books appeared about 1660, and 
from that date to the time of his retirement he 
brought out more than a hundred books and albums 
and an unknown number of broadsheets. In all of 
these his vigorous, genial personality and his strong 
sense of decoration make themselves felt. Such a 
print as the album-sheet reproduced in Plate i 
exhibits his characteristic simplicity of sweeping 
line, the masterly use he makes of black and white 
contrasts, and the vivid force of his rendering of 
movement. The firm lines live ; the composition is 
grouped to form a harmonious picture ; a dominating 
sense of form has entered here to transform the 
chaotic raggedness of his predecessors' attempts. 
Distorted as these figures may appear to unaccus- 
tomed Western eyes, they have unmistakable style, 
and their bold command of expression is the first 
great landmark in Japanese print history. 

All of Moronobu's work was printed in black and 
white only, but occasionally the sheets were roughly 



74 CHATS ON JAPANESE PEINTS 

coloured by hand after they had been printed. His 
designs have little detail ; as a rule the scene sur- 
rounding his main figures is barely suggested by a 
few lines ; and the figures themselves are hardly 
more than intense shorthand notations of a theme. 
But how much life he gives them ! No wonder that 
the populace loved his work, and that his many pupils 
bore away with them to their own productions the 
impress of his strong personality and animated style. 

Certain of Moronobu's large single-sheet compo- 
sitions (such as the Lady Standing Under a Cherry 
Tree, in the Buckingham Collection, Chicago, or the 
noble Figure of a Woman in the Morse Collection, 
Evanston), display so fine a power of composition 
and so unsurpassable a mastery of rhythmic line 
that there can be no hesitancy in judging him, quite 
apart from his historical significance, to be an artist 
of the first order. Nothing that he ever did was 
undistinguished. 

The collector will not find it easy to procure 
adequate specimens of this artist's work. Moro- 
nobu's large single sheets are unobtainable to-day ; 
they could never have been numerous, and the few 
that have survived the vicissitudes of almost three 
centuries are now in the hands of museums or 
collectors who will never part with them. Even 
his smaller single sheets are uncommon. His work 
is seldom signed. 

Followers of Moronobu. 
The powerful impetus of Moronobu's art commu- 
nicated itself to many pupils. 



FIEST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 75 



MOROFUSA was the eldest son of Moronobu ; he 
collaborated with his father, and produced designs 
that are in exact imitation of his father's style. His 
work comprises book illustrations and some large 
single sheets, and is very rare. 

Additional pupils or contemporaries were : Moro- 
masa, Moronaga, Morikuni, Masanojo, Moroshige, 
Morobei, Masataka, Osawa, Morotsugi, Moromori, 
Hishikawa Masanobu, Tomofusa, Shimbei, Toshiyuki, 
Furuyama, Morotane, Ryujo, Hasegawa Toun, Ishi- 
kawa Riusen, Ishikawa Riushu, Wowo, Kawashima 
Shigenobu,Kichi,YoshimuraKatsumasa,andTsukioka 
Tange. Many of these are obscure figures, of whose 
work little is known. Most of 
them were chiefly book-illustrators. 

SUKENOBU. 
The name of Nishikawa Suken- 
obu brings to mind that long 
procession of charming girl figures 
which year by year came from his 
hand — figures whose sweet mono- 
tonous faces and delicately poised 
bodies move with a pure grace 
that is perpetually delighting. 
Lacking the powerful decorative 
sense of Moronobu, whose lead he 
in general followed, and never 
attempting the massive blacks of 
the master's dashing brush-stroke, Sukenobu yet 
achieved effects that are more gracious and appeal- 
ing than those of his great predecessor. Nothing 




NISHIKAWA 
SUKENOBU. 



76 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

could surpass the delicate harmony of line in such 
a design as the one reproduced in Plate 2 ; the 
willowyness of the young body, the naive innocence 
of the head, the movement and rhythm of the 
flowing garments, are admirably depicted. This was 
Sukenobu's characteristic note ; he lingers in one's 
memory by virtue of it and none other ; he was the 
least versatile of artists. 

He lived between the years 1671 and 175 1. During 
the period of his activity his popularity must have 
been enormous. The single-sheet prints which he 
produced were not many, and only a small propor- 
tion of these have come down to us. His main 
work was in the field of illustrated books and 
albums. More than forty of these are known to-day. 
They contain chiefly scenes from the lives of women 
and figures of young girls. Most of them date from 
17 1 3 to 1750. They constitute Sukenobu's claim to 
rank as Moronobu's most important successor in the 
field of book-illustration. Generally they are printed 
in black and white only ; a few are embellished with 
colour added by hand. It is not always possible to 
tell whether this colouring was done when the books 
were published or whether it was the work of some 
subsequent owner of the volume. 

The delicacy of Sukenobu's designs, and the 
absence of those peculiar mannerisms and exag- 
gerations which characterize much of the work of 
this period, serve to make him, of all the Primitives, 
perhaps the most comprehensible and pleasing to the 
European taste. To the Japanese connoisseur he 
recommends himself because of the refinement of 




SUKENOBU : A YOUNG COURTESAN. 

Black outlines, with hand-colouring of pale green, orange, and white. 
Size 9j X 6. Unsigned. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 79 

his work both in subject and in manner, and 
because of a certain classic dignity that pervades it. 
The collector will do well to bear in mind that the 
books of Sukenobu were frequently reprinted long 
after his death ; and these later impressions, lacking 
the original sharpness of line and intensity of tone 
in the blacks, are not desirable acquisitions. The 
original editions of his books are still to be found 
occasionally. His single-sheet prints are, however, 
of great rarity. 

KWAIGETSUDO. 

In the period immediately succeeding Moronobu — 
the early years of the eighteenth century — the work 
which of all others stands out with a unique and 
colossal grandeur is that of Kwaigetsudo. 

Kwaigetsudo has long been a puzzle to the 
student. The original idea held by Fenollosa and 
other authorities, that all the prints signed Kwaiget- 
sudo were by one man, has been abandoned ; and 
the theory now prevails that there existed a group 
of artists, headed by a dominant master named 
Kwaigetsudo, and that all of these artists produced 
prints signed with his name together with their own. 
The most perplexing problem has been to determine 
which of the print-makers was the original master 
and which were his disciples. Dr. Kurth confi- 
dently states that Kwaigetsudo Norishige, was the 
original master. On the other hand, Mr. Arthur 
Morrison has recently expressed the opinion that 
the original Kwaigetsudo was solely a painter, who 
produced no prints whatsoever. His studio name 



80 CHATS ON JAPANESE PKINTS 

was Kwaigetsudd Ando ; his personal name was 
Okazawa Genshichi ; he was a late contemporary 
of Moronobu, and worked in Yedo from about 1704 
to 17 14, when he was banished to the island of 
Oshima in consequence of his participation in a 
scandal involving a gay banquet party at a theatre 
tea-house attended by certain Court ladies. Later 
he was pardoned, but did not resume his work. 
According to this theory all the prints were the 
work of his followers, who signed the name 
Kwaigetsudo with various additions. This view is 
probably the correct one. 

The names of the Kwaigetsudo group of print- 
designers that have so far come to light are — 

Kwaigetsudo Anchi (or Yasutomo); 
Kwaigetsudo Dohan (or Norishige) ; 
Kwaigetsudo Doshu (or Norihide) ; 
Kwaigetsudo Doshin (or Noritatsu). 

The Kwaigetsudo work is perhaps the most 
powerful and imposing in the whole range of 
Japanese prints. The sheets, of large size, generally 
represent the single figure of a standing woman clad 
in flowing robes. So much for the theme; it is 
nothing. But the treatment consists of a storm of 
brush-strokes whose power of movement is like that 
of writhing natural forces ; out of this seething whirl 
of lines is built up the structure of the monumental 
figure. 

The Kwaigetsudo reproduced in Plate 3 exhibits 
these qualities. The body is merely suggested, but 
with complete effectiveness, under the great swirls of 




KWAIGETSUDO : COURTESAN ARRANGING HER COIFFURE. 

Black and white. Size 24I x 12, 

Signed Nippon Kigwa Kwaigetsu Matsuyo Norishige. 

Spaulding Collection. 

J'lafe 3. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 83 

the robes. The dominance of the main curves, the 
vigour of the blacks, and the importunate life that 
vitalizes every touch and line, give Kwaigetsudo 
a place as high as the greatest contemporaries or 
successors. 

All the Kwaigetsudo work was printed in black 
and white ; sometimes the print was hand-coloured 
by the application of spots of tan, or red lead. 
Excellent full-size reproductions of several of them 
are obtainable. With these reproductions the 
ordinary collector will be obliged to content him- 
self, for the whole number of Kwaigetsudo prints 
in existence can scarcely be more than a score or 
two. They are perhaps the rarest of all prints. 

The First Kiyonobu. 

Kiyonobu Speaks. 

The actor on his little stage 
Struts with a mimic rage. 
Across my page 
My passion in his form shall tower from age to age. 

What he so crudely dreams 
In vague and fitful gleams — 
The crowd esteems. 
Well ! let the future judge if his or mine this seems — 

This calm Titanic mould 
Stalking in colours bold 
Fold upon fold — 
This lord of dark, this dream I dreamed of old! 

With Kiyonobu begins that school of painters, the 
Torii, which was to take the initiative during the 
first half of the eighteenth century in developing 
the actor-portrait to a very high level, and which 



84 



CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



still later was to have the honour of claiming as its 
head Kiyonaga, in whom the whole art culminated. 
It may be convenient to list here the successive 
leaders of the school, who were in their turn entitled 
to the name of the Torii, and whom we shall take up 
in their order. 



Torii I 


Kiyonobu I 


... (1664-1729) 


Torii II 


Kiyomasu 


... (1679-1763) 


Torii III . 


Kiyomitsu 


- (1735-1785) 


Torii IV . 


Kiyonaga 


... {1742-1815) 


Torii V 


Kiyomine 


... (1 786-1 868) 


Torii VI 


Kiyofusa 


... (1832-1892) 



The importance of the school terminated with Ki- 
yonaga, or at latest with Kiyomine. 
Kiyonobu I, the founder of the 
Torii line, was born in 1664 and 
died in 1729. It is said that he 
was first a resident of Osaka, and 
then of Kyoto ; and that he finally 
w m ^ came to Yedo about the beginning 

yp^/^ of the gay and brilliant Genroku 

Period, 1688-1703. Thus he must 
have been in Yedo a few years 
^' *f^ before the death of Moronobu in 

f H I795> and it is evident that he 

studied the Moronobu style. Ki- 
t^*^ yonobu's father is variously re- 

I E2 ported to have been either an 

actor or a painter of theatrical 
sign-posters ; at any rate his 
TORII KIYONOBU. counectioH with the theatre was 
a close one. This circumstance 
doubtless determined the line of the son's activity 




FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 85 

in designing. About 1700 Kiyonobu produced the 
first single-sheet actor-print in black and white only. 
From this it was only a step to the production of 
tan-ye, which he probably invented — actor-sheets 
simply but brilliantly coloured by the application of 
orange to certain portions of the picture. In this 
manner he issued both hoso-ye (that \s>, sheets about 
12 inches high and 6 inches wide) and sheets of 
larger size, perhaps the most striking being actor- 
portraits, sometimes several feet in height, which 
enjoyed an immense popularity. By about 171 5 
he had taken up a more delicate kind of hand- 
colouring known as kurenai-ye, which some writers 
think he himself devised. A few years later he 
adopted the urushi-ye technique, increasing the 
number of colours and using lacquer to heighten 
the brilliancy of the effect. 

Kiyonobu's subjects comprised a few landscapes 
of no great interest, and figures of several types. 
Y{\^ forte was the representation of actors and heroes 
of history. His bold and gigantic style of drawing 
lends some probability to the story that he was, 
when he first came to Yedo, a painter of huge 
theatrical sign-boards or posters for the exteriors 
of theatres. The same manner that would be 
appropriate for these is found in his prints — arresting, 
forceful, highly exaggerated. His designs must be 
regarded as establishing for all later times the 
general type to be used in actor-portraits. This 
constitutes his greatest historical importance. 

The prints which appear to be Kiyonobu's earliest 
are marked by an extraordinary development of line, 



86 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

handled in great sweeping strokes. The brushwork 
is indicated with much dash and bravura, in the 
manner of the painter as distinct from the print- 
designer. A hasty glance might lead one to mistake 
some of these early compositions for the work of 
a Kwaigetsudo, though they are, as a rule, more 
uncouth. 

Although power of line always remains one of 
Kiyonobu's characteristics, there appears in his later 
work a certain insistence on spaces, a treatment of 
the surface of the print as if it were a placque into 
which were to be inlaid large flat masses of a 
different substance. The robes are broken up into 
definite segments with sharp boundaries like parts of 
a picture puzzle, instead of remaining a surface on 
which to display the splintering vigour of brush- 
strokes. This second style is admirably adapted to 
the technique of wood-engraving. 

The geometrical quality of some of Kiyonobu's 
designs is striking. There are several of his large 
tan-ye in which the whole print is nothing more than 
a series of great circles, brought into relation with 
each other, as part of the decoration of the drapery, 
by wild and whirling brush-strokes. 

The work of Kiyonobu varies greatly in attrac- 
tiveness. Some of his prints have more force than 
beauty ; and it requires little effort to understand 
the contempt of the aristocracy for these crude mani- 
festations of the mob's taste. Yet even in these 
grosser designs Kiyonobu realizes the power and 
passion of the dramatic role which he depicts, 
achieving an effect of tragic rage that is no less 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 87 

intense and impressive because of its lack of subtlety. 
Most of his prints suggest the shout and roar of 
bombast : this is precisely what they were meant 
to convey. But there are a few of another type, 
that embody the masterful power of line of the 
first Torii, joined with a simplicity and refine- 
ment of design which his work frequently lacked, 
or which, if present, is disguised from us by the 
repellent violence of the figure portrayed. One 
must see Kiyonobu's rarest and greatest prints in 
order to realize why he is regarded as so great an 
artist. 

I have written of Kiyonobu as if he presented no 
difficulties ; but such is not the case. A stumbling- 
block for the student is created by the fact that there 
exist many two-colour prints signed Kiyonobu. It 
is recorded that Kiyonobu died in 1729, many years 
before the date fixed upon by Fenollosa and most 
other authorities as the date of the invention of 
colour-printing. If we are to believe that the 
numerous colour-prints signed Kiyonobu are by the 
first Torii, we must either put back the date of 
the invention of colour-printing to an extent that 
is improbable in view of other facts, or we must 
abandon the recorded date of Kiyonobu's death and 
regard his life as having extended well beyond the 
middle of the eighteenth century. Formerly this 
difficulty was not appreciated, and all work signed 
Kiyonobu was confidently attributed to the first 
Torii ; but at present it is generally regarded as 
likely that there was a second Kiyonobu who pro- 
duced all the two-colour prints signed with that 



88 



CHATS ON JAPANESE FEINTS 



name. Whether he produced any hand-coloured 
prints is uncertain. This Kiyonobu II theory has 
met with scepticism in certain quarters, and some 
students prefer to accept the alternative of one of 
the two other possible solutions of the puzzle. 
Certain differences in style between the hand- 
coloured and the two-colour work 
confirm the Kiyonobu II theory to 
such an extent that I have felt 
constrained to adopt it here. It 
may be disproved eventually, but 
it is the best solution available at 
present. I shall therefore take up 
TlJ Kiyonobu II as a separate artist, 

/ r*7 without again drawing attention to 

^ the unsettled state of the relation 

between him and Kiyonobu I. 

KlYOMASU. 
Jl^^y Kiyomasu, the second head of 

I Y'^J^ the Torii School, has been variously 
regarded as the brother or the son 
of the first Torii. The question of 
this exact relationship is a matter 
scarcely worth all the words that 
have been wasted upon it. What is important is 
the well-known fact that the two kinsmen worked 
side by side in the same studio for many years pro- 
ducing work of precisely the same type. The most 
experienced judges would find it impossible in some 
cases to distinguish between their productions. 

Kiyomasu was born about 1679 ; some authorities 



TORII KIYOMASU. 



FIEST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 89 

say 1685 ; but if it is true, as Von Seidlitz states, 
that there exists a play-bill by him which is dated 
1693, the earlier of the two dates is the only possible 
one. Since Kiyonobu was born in 1664, the theory 
that they were brothers is the more probable. Kiyo- 
masu's chief work was done contemporaneously with 
Kiyonobu's, in black and white, tan-ye, and urushi-ye ; 
but later he produced some prints in two colours. 
His subjects were chiefly women and actors ; he 
executed a few small landscapes and some fine repre- 
sentations of birds. His work must have continued 
some years after 1743, but appears to have terminated 
a considerable time before his death in 1763 or 1764. 
A more prolific artist than the first Torii, Kiyo- 
masu was in some particulars an equally distinguished 
one. Possibly his originality was less marked in that 
he merely followed the actor type which had already 
been created by Kioyonobu ; but in the power of his 
draughtsmanship, reminding one again and again of 
a tempered Kwaigetsudo, he is no secondary figure. 
Nothing can surpass the vigour of linework in some 
of his large figure prints — great curves made with a 
heavily charged brush, expressing with notable 
simplicity the beauty of flowing drapery. His 
masterpiece is undoubtedly that superb figure in 
black and white of the actor Kanto Koroku (in the 
Buckingham Collection, Chicago), drawn in the 
Moronobu-Kwaigetsudo manner, which is reproduced 
in Fenollosa's " Epochs of Chinese and Japanese 
Art " with the erroneous attribution of Kiyonobu. 
This print is a triumph. Nothing finer was designed 
by all the succeeding generations of artists. 



90 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

The Second Kiyonobu. 

Kiyonobu II, who signed all his work simply 
Kiyonobu, was a son of Kiyomasu, and probably a 
nephew of Kiyonobu I. His whole name was Torii 
Kiyonobu Shiro. He appears to have worked chiefly 
from about 1740 to about 1756, the period of the 
predominance of the two-colour print. All two- 
colour prints signed Kiyonobu are by this artist 
and not by the first Torii, who died before the 
process was invented. Kiyonobu II is regarded by 
many collectors as the best representative of the 
two-colour technique. His figures have a delicacy 
and grace that is alien to the work of his two prede- 
cessors in the Torii School ; and his handling of the 
green and rose designs of these prints is charming. 
The great insistent colour masses and monumental 
figures of his predecessors undergo a change in his 
hands to a more detailed division of colours and a 
slightening of the forms of the bodies and limbs. 
Also the old passionate vigour of brushwork dis- 
appears in the new technique — a loss that seems 
a grave one. 

Most writers speak of Kiyonobu II as a two-colour 
artist only. It is, however, fairly established that 
at least one of the urushi-ye signed Kiyonobu is 
by Kiyonobu II. That he did a few three-colour 
prints is certain. His work, like that of all these 
early men, is rare. It is particularly difficult to find 
examples of his beni-ye that are in good condition, 
since the rose-colour has in most cases entirely 
faded. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 91 

Other Followers of Kiyonobu. 

KlYOTADA was one of the best known and one of 
the most brilliant of the numerous followers of the 
great Torii pioneers. He is said to have been a pupil 
of Kiyonobu I. His period of production began not 
far from 17 15, and ended before the invention of 
two-colour printing. His prints are all tan-ye or 
urushi-ye^ some of them slightly like Okumura 
Masanobu in style. Certain of his hoso-ye have 
fascinating curves and superb colour — red, yellow, 
green, pink, and black, woven together into rich 
combinations. 

KlYOSHlGE produced very fine actor-portraits 
coloured by hand, which remind one distinctly of 
Kiyonobu I in his later period. Large masses of 
colour are used by him with powerful decorative 
effect ; and the geometrical designs of his textiles are 
sometimes striking. Kiyoshige's work has a strong 
yet graceful quality that makes him worthy of more 
attention than he has hitherto received. He lived to 
produce some two-colour prints. Dr. Kurth believes 
him to have been the first to use the pillar-print form 
for actor-portraits. His working period was from 
about 1720 to about 1759. 

Hanegawa Chincho was an eccentric and inter- 
esting figure, who, though a pupil of Kiyonobu I, 
appears to have been more closely related to the 
Kwaigetsudo School than to the Torii. Born about 
1680 he, by birth a Samurai, became a Ronin, and 
entered the studio of Kiyonobu. He was erratic, 
proud, and isolated. In spite of his pressing poverty, 



92 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

he worked at print-designing only when it pleased 
him to do so, which was seldom ; and though he 
lived until 1754, his output was small He was a 
poet and an aristocrat. His single-sheet prints have 
a curious esoteric quality — strange, stiff, beautiful 
curves that are not quite like the work of any 
other designer. Chincho's work is of extraordinary 
rarity ; there can scarcely be more than a score of 
his prints in existence. 

Hanekawa-Wagen is represented by two prints 
in the Buckingham Collection. Nothing is known of 
him. 

KlYOTOMO, whose work appears to fall entirely 
within the period of hand-coloured prints, produced 
excellent actor designs, in some of which the line- 
work reminds one slightly of Kwaigetsudo. The 
influence of Kiyomasu appears in some of his urushu 
ye. His prints are distinguished by their vigour and 
are found but seldom. 

Sanseido Tanaka Masunobu produced hand- 
coloured and two-colour prints in the Torii manner. 
A print by him dated 1746 is known, but most of his 
work precedes 1740. He is not to be confused with 
the Masunobu who was Harunobu's pupil. 

KlYOSOMO is said to have been a distinguished 
pupil of Kiyonobu I, influenced also by Okumura 
Masanobu. 

Other men of this period, closely connected with 
the Torii School, were : Kiyoake, Kondo Sukegoro 
Kiyoharu, Katsukawa Terushige, Nishikawa Teru- 
nobu, Nishikawa Omume, Fujikawa Yoshinobu, 
Tamura Yoshinobu, Tamura Sadanobu, Kichikawa 



i 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 95 



Katsumasa, Kiyomizu Mazunobu, Shimizu Mitsu- 
nobu, Kondo Kiyonobu, Kondo Katsunobu, Kiyoro, 
Tadaharu, and Nakaji Sadatoshi. 



A Figure. 



Okumura Masanobu. 

Garbed in flowing folds of light, 
Azure, emerald, rose, and white, 
Watchest thou across the night. 

Crowned with splendour is thine head ; 
All the princes great and dead 
Round thy limbs their state have shed — 

Calm, immutable to stand, 
Gracious head and poised hand, 
O'er the years that flow like sand. 

Okumura Masanobu may be termed the central 
figure of this period : not only 
does he tower among the greatest 
men of the time, but around him 
revolve the changes in technique, 
full of far-reaching consequences, 
which came into being with his 
invention of two-colour printing. 

Furthermore, he takes on an 
additional historical importance as 
the founder of the Okumura 
School, which continued parallel 
with the Torii School, and whose 
productions are characterized by 
a finer development of grace and 
elegance than is to be found in 
the output of the rival line. 

Masanobu was born about 1685, 
and lived until about 1764 — a life of very nearly 




OKUMURA MASANOBU. 



96 



CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



eighty years, full of varied achievements. During 
the course of his career he used many names, among 
which Genpachi, Hogetsudo, Tanchosai, Bunkaku, 
and Kammyo are the most frequent. Little is known 
of his life except that he began as a bookseller in 
Yedo. He is reputed to have been a pupil of 
Kiyonobu, but Mr. Arthur Morrison believes this 
to be an error, and thinks that 
Masanobu was an independent 
artist educated in no one of the 
Yedo schools. Whichever account 
may be correct, it is at least 
certain that Masanobu shows in 
II his work few traces of resemblance 

J-l to the first of the Torii masters. 

1 I It is equally clear that he was 

early and strongly influenced by 
the work of Moronobu, who died 
when Masanobu was only ten years 
old, but whose designs were of 
course still widely known. It is 
said that soon after 1707 Masanobu 
founded a publishing establishment 
in connection with his book-shop, 
issuing prints as well as books. This must have 
afforded him great opportunities for experiments in 
technique, and may have been no small factor in 
making possible the remarkable advances for which 
he was responsible. 

Masanobu's earliest works were book-illustrations 
and albums, which closely follow the manner 
of Moronobu. Plate 4 reproduces one of these. 




HOGETSUDO. 




":^ 



4A^ 



OKUMURA MASANOBU : STANDING WOMAN. 

Black outlines, with hand-colouring of black lacquer, orange, 
yellow, and gold powder. Size 13J x 6. 
Signed Yamato no Gwako, Okuniura Masanobu, hitsu. 



J'late 5. 



97 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 99 

Parallel with them he produced a number of tan-ye^ 
the large single-sheet prints in black and white, 
which, after printing, were coloured by hand with 
orange pigment. These probably date from before 
1720, although exactness cannot be hoped for. 
About 1720 he began to do work in a medium 
which he is said to have invented — the urushi-ye^ 
or lacquer-prints, in which the lacquer gives a new 
richness and luminosity to the various colours. An 
example of these appears in Plate 5. The device 
of heightening the effect by applying gold powder 
to certain portions of the design was also employed 
by him. A play of light that is extraordinarily 
fascinating often marks his combinations of colours. 
By about 1742 a new technical advance, the most 
vital in the whole history of the art, came into 
existence ; and Masanobu is generally credited with 
its invention. This was the employment of two 
blocks beside the black key -block to print two other 
colours upon the paper. The importance of this step 
was immeasurable : when it was taken the doom of 
the hand-coloured print was sealed, and the way to 
still further development lay open. At first the 
colours used by Masanobu in his two-colour works 
were a delicate apple-green and the equally delicate 
rose called beni, from which the name beni-ye came 
to be applied to all the two-colour prints of this 
period. A print of this type appears in Plate 6. 
The combination of these two colours is singularly 
lovely, and the fresh charm of these sheets has led 
some collectors to prize them as the most beautiful 
products of the art. 



100 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Certainly Masanobu's mastery of the problem of 
producing a rich and vivacious colour-composition 
by the use of only two colours is noteworthy. By 
varying the size and shape of his colour masses, and 
by a judicious use of the white of the paper and 
the black of the key-block, he produces an effect 
of such colour-fullness that it requires a distinct 
effort of the mind to convince oneself that these 
prints are designs in two tones only, and not full- 
colour prints. Masanobu lived long enough to 
produce some three-colour prints, when these were 
devised about 1755, but the effects he obtained in 
them were possibly less fascinating than those of 
his earlier process. 

It can probably never be proven that Masanobu 
was, in fact, the inventor of all the devices that 
were attributed to him — the lacquer-print, the beni 
print, the use of gold powder, and the first actual 
prints in colour. Certainly some of them may be 
credited to him ; but any one familiar with the 
growth of hero-legends knows how a great name 
attracts to itself in popular report achievements that 
were really the fruit of scattered lesser men. To 
the list of Masanobu's probable inventions must be 
added the pillar-print, that remarkable type, about 
4 to 6 inches wide and 25 to 40 inches high, 
which was to be an important form of design from 
this date on. It is possible that we must also 
attribute to him the invention of the mica back- 
ground — that silver surface of powdered mica which 
give a curious and beautiful tone to the figures 
outlined against it. 




OKUMURA MASAXOBU : YOUXG XOBLEMAX PLAYIXG THE 
DRUM. 

Printed in black, green, and rose. Size 12 x 6. 
Signed Hogetsudo Okiimiira'Masanobn, liitsn. Chandler Collection. 



Plate 6. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 103 

Of Masanobu as a designer it is difficult to speak 
with moderation. Through his work runs that sweep- 
ing power of line which he derived from his study 
of Moronobu, and, in addition, an elegance and suave 
grace that is the expression of his innate grace of 
spirit. The grandeur of certain others of the Primi- 
tives is austere and harsh, but Masanobu is always 
mellow and harmonious. His figures, more finely 
proportioned than most of the figures of the period, 
sway in easy motion — a mixture of sweetness and 
distinction characterizes the poised heads, superb 
bodies, and ample draperies of his women, while 
every resource of compact and dignified design is 
expended upon the impressive figures of his men. 
A certain large geniality, a wide, sunlighted warmth 
of conception, runs through his work. The dramatic 
distortions of his Torii predecessors and contempo- 
raries are melted in him, as towering but uncouth 
icebergs melt in the sun of kindlier latitudes. At 
times his line-work has a force that seems derived 
from the Kwaigetsudo tradition ; more often it is 
imbued with a gentler rhythm no less expressive of 
strength. In his finest designs he achieves notable 
balance of line, and a massing of colour beside which, 
as Fenollosa remarks, "even the facades of Greek 
temples were possibly cold and half-charged in 
comparison." 

Women, out-of-door scenes, and a few actors, 
constitute the main subjects of Masanobu's work. 
As a portraitist, his few productions, such as the 
well-known humorous pillar-print of the story-teller 
Koshi Shikoden, give him rank as the greatest of his 



104 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

time. The landscape backgrounds in some of his 
smaller prints are a delightful innovation, executed 
with delicate power of suggesting by a few strokes 
the whole circle of a natural setting. The quiet 
charm of these landscapes surrounds with an atmo- 
sphere of felicity the beautiful figures that move 
through them. 

A full and brilliant life stirs in all Masanobu's 
work. At no other period in the history of Ukioye 
was such effective use made of the patterns of 
draperies. The elaborate fashions of the brocades 
worn in this day lent themselves to the decorative 
needs of the larger prints ; and frequently we find 
the figures clothed in a riot of striking textiles — 
flowers, trees, birds, ships, geometrical shapes — all 
mingled in the weave of the cloth, and arranged 
by the print-designer into a combination that is 
tumultuous without confusion and glowing without 
garishness. Masanobu's pictures seem the overflow 
of his spirit's wealth ; they never have the ascetic 
and rarefied quality that sometimes appears in the 
work of even great artists. 

Masanobu's work is scarce. His larger and more 
important prints very rarely appear outside of the 
great collections. 

Pupils of Okumura Masanobu. 
Okumura Toshinobu, a son of Masanobu who 
died young, was the best as well as the most famous 
of Masanobu's pupils. He gave promise of becoming 
one of the notable print-designers, and even in his 
short career produced work of high quality. Born 



FIBST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 105 

about 1709, his period of production covered the 
years of the lacquer-prints, and ended before 1743. 
His urushi-ye, lithe in design and powerful in colour- 
ing, constitute almost his whole known work. 

Okumura Masafusa, Shuseido, Hanekawa Chiucho 
Motonobu, and Mangetsud5 may be mentioned as 
other and less important pupils of Masanobu. 

NiSHIMURA SHIGENOBU. 
Nishimura Shigenobu is an artist about whom 
there is great confusion. He is variously called the 
father, the son, or the pupil of the better-known 
artist Shigenaga : the first of these alternatives is the 
most probable. Nothing is known of Shigenobu's 
life, and very little of his work is extant. Kurth says 
that Shigenobu founded the Nishimura School, and 
worked in the manner of the earliest Torii. Von 
Seidlitz believes that he did some work in the 
Kwaigetsud5 manner. FenoUosa dates his work 
1720-40, and thinks that he worked first like the 
Torii, then like Masanobu. At present it seems 
impossible to gather further information about this 
interesting artist. 

Shigenaga. 
Nishimura Shigenaga was at one time regarded as 
the inventor of the two-colour process ; but now that 
the weight of opinion attributes this invention to 
Masanobu, Shigenaga remains a figure whose im- 
portance is hardly diminished. He must still be 
regarded as perhaps the most notable master of the 
Nishimura School, both as a designer and as the 



106 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



teacher of a group of pupils whose brilliancy is 
equalled by the disciples of no other artist. 

Shigenaga was born in 1697 and lived until 1756. 
He used the names Senkwado and Magosaburo as 
well as his own. Little is known of him personally, 
except that he was probably the son of Shigenobu. 
His work began with black-and-white prints in 
the manner of Kiyonobu ; these were already 
something of an anachronism at 
the date when he commenced 
his designing. He then turned 
yf 1 to urushi-ye, and produced some 

' ' ^ beautiful examples. About 1742, 

^Jpa* when the two-colour process was 

Mt^_ invented, he made himself one of 

the most successful masters of 
it. Dr. Anderson reproduces, as 
the frontispiece of his *' Japanese 
Wood-Engraving," a fine example 
of Shigenaga's work in this tech- 
nique, but erroneously dates it as 
1725 — more than fifteen years too 
early. Shigenaga also did fine 
work in the three-colour process, 
of which he may possibly have been the inventor. 
His designs comprise not only women and actors, 
but also landscapes, flowers, animals, and birds. His 
versatility is one of his most striking characteristics. 
It was from the style of Masanobu that Shigenaga 
drew his most lasting stimulus ; and among his 
sheets we shall find many a figure worthy to stand 
beside his master's serene creations. Dr. Kurth calls 




NISHIMURA 
SHIGENAGA. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 107 

him a " faded or weakened Masanobu " ; but this 
term can be applied with justice to only a portion of 
Shigenaga's work. His productions are uneven ; 
part are indeed somewhat tame ; but certain of his 
designs rise to a high level. His finest works, which 
are rare, are his figures of graceful women in the 
Masanobu manner. But he was no mere imitator. 
The Masanobu poise, the Masanobu flow and pattern- 
ing of garments he did, it is true, adopt ; but with 
how fresh and sensitive a life does he infuse them ! 
Shigenaga's pupils comprise most of the great men 
of the succeeding generation. Toyonobu, Harunobu, 
Koriusai, Shigemasa, Toyoharu, and many others 
learned from him the elements of their art. Thus 
Shigenaga may be regarded as the most important 
bridge between the Primitives and the later men, 
passing over to them the traditions of the older 
schools together with the stimulus of that fresh, 
inventive, and assimilative spirit which was peculiarly 
his own. 

Pupils of Shigenaga. 

Among the less important pupils or associates of 
Shigenaga may be named the following artists : — 

TSUNEGAWA Shigenobu produced work much 
like Shigenaga's ; in the few prints of his which I 
have seen there is grace and ease, but not great 
strength. His work appears to have been mainly 
in urushi-ye. Mr. Gookin believes this name to be 
merely the early name of Nishimura Shigenobu. 

YosENDO Yasunobu or Anshin, by whom a 
fine lacquer-print with strong blacks is in the 



108 CHATS ON JAPANESE FEINTS 

Spaulding Collection, may, with some hesitancy, be 
classed here. Mr. Gookin thinks this signature may 
be merely one of the studio names of some more 
famous artist. 

Nagahide, dated by Strange about 1760, appears 
to belong to this group. The Harmsworth Collection, 
London, contains a print by him representing famous 
theatrical characters depicted by geisha, the colours 
partly printed and partly applied by hand. 

Harutoshi is known to me only by one pillar- 
print, in the manner of Shigenaga's actors. It is 
doubtful where he should be classified. 

Akiyama Sadaharu, Hirose Shigenobu, and 
Ryukwado Ichiichido Shigenobu were obscure 
pupils of Shigenaga. 

Yamamoto Yoshinobu is said by Fenollosa to 
have been a pupil of Shigenaga, and possibly the 
same as Komai Yoshinobu, who is treated later 
under Harunobu. Dr. Kurth thinks him a member 
of a Yamamoto School, which comprised also 
Yamamoto Denroku, Yamamoto Shigenobu, 
Yamamoto Shigefusa, Yamamoto Fujinobu, 
Yamamoto Shigeharu, Tomikawa Ginsetsu 
also known as FuSANOBU, YAMAMOTO Maruya 
Kyuyeimon, Yamamoto Kuzayeimon, and Yama- 
moto Rihei. 

toyonobu. 

A Pillar Print. 

O lady of the long robes, the slow folds flowing — 
Lady of the white breast, the dark and lofty head — 
Dwells there any wonder, the way that thou art going — 

Or goest thou toward the dead ? 




TOYONOBU : TWO KOMUSO, REPRESENTED BY THE ACTORS SANOKAWA 
ICHIMATSU AND ONOYE KIKUGORO, 



Printed in black and three colours. Size 15 x 10. 
Signed Tanjodo, Ishikawa Shiiha Toyonobn ga. Chandler Collection. 



J'lafe 7. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 111 



So calm thy solemn steps, so slow the long lines sweeping 
Of garments pale and ghostly, of limbs as grave as sleep — 
I know not if thou, spectre, hast love or death in keeping, 

Or goest toward which deep. 

Thou layest thy robes aside with gesture large and flowing. 
Is it for love or sleep — is it for life or death? 
I would my feet might follow the path that thou art going. 

And thy breath be my breath. 

Ishikawa Toyonobu, who not many years ago was 
regarded as an artist of secondary importance, has of 
late, thanks to fresh discoveries, 
come to be esteemed by com- 
petent observers as one of the 
giants of the line — one of those 
masters among the Primitives 
whose dignity of composition 
makes all but a handful of his 
successors appear petty beside 
him. 

This important artist, who some- 
times signed himself Shuha, was, 
like so many other of the better 
men of his time, a pupil of 
Shigenaga. In his early work we 
find him influenced by the suave 
and noble figures of Okumura 
Masanobu more than by the 
figures of his direct master. Born in 171 1, Toyonobu 
lived until 1785 ; and the long space of his life thus 
extended beyond the period of the Primitives and 
into the period of polychrome printing. Neverthe- 
less his real activity terminated with the end of the 
Primitive Period. His earliest work was in black- 




ISHIKAWA TOYONOBU. 



112 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

and-white or hand-coloured ; from this he passed 
on to two-colour prints, a manner in which he 
produced many hoso-ye of flawless grace ; and then 
into three-colour prints, in which his most important 
work was accomplished, and " whose classic master," 
as Kurth says, "he may be called." Between 1755 
and 1764, the great period of the three-colour print, 
Toyonobu stood almost unmatched in the field. A 
fine example of his work appears in Plate 7. After 
1764 the ascendancy of Harunobu eclipsed Toyo- 
nobu ; even the classic style of the older master could 
not match the brilliant and popular innovations of 
Harunobu's " brocade pictures." He was therefore 
driven to take up the technique of full-colour 
printing. In one print he gives us figures like those 
of Koriusai ; in another he follows Harunobu with 
the most complete exactness. Though forced to the 
wall, the old giant could still fight his rivals, and 
with their own weapons. 

The works of Toyonobu's prime — particularly his 
pillar-prints — produce a singular impression of lofty 
greatness. His line-arrangements have always a 
magical serenity and balance, and the repose of 
his compositions is equalled only by their strength. 
In these tall figures, where hauntingly lovely lines 
never degenerate into mere sweetness, there is a 
combination of rigour with suavity, of force with grace, 
that makes him forever memorable. His masterful 
precision, and the curiously " towering " effect which 
his figures produce, as in the Girl with the Umbrella 
reproduced in Plate 8, serve to mark him as one of the 
important representatives of the grand style in design. 






: I 



TOYOXOBU : GIRL OPENING 
AN UMBRELLA. 

•Black outlines, with hand-colouring. 

Size 27 X 6. 

Signed Tanjodo, Ishikawa Shiiha 

Toyov.obii zu. 

Metzgar Collection. 



TOYONOBU : WOMAN 
DRESSING. 

Printed in black and three 

colours. 

Size 27 X 4. 

Signed Js/zf^aa'a Toyonobit, 

hitsii. 



Plate 8. 



113 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 115 

Perhaps more than any other artist of the Ukioye 
School, Toyonobu devoted himself to the drawing 
of the nude. These rare works are among the 
finest of his productions, and are so distinctly an 
exception to the general practice of Japanese artists 
that they call for special remark. Certain other 
painters also produced a few such pictures, but they 
must all be regarded as sporadic phenomena running 
counter to the characteristic Japanese feeling. The 
national temper recognizes feminine beauty in art 
only when clothed ; and it is due solely to the 
profounder perception of a few great artists that 
any such designs have come down to us. One is 
moved to speculation over this curious fact, par- 
ticularly when one considers that the sight of the 
body, at least among the lower classes, must have 
been almost as common in Japan at this time as 
it was in Greece during the great period of Athenian 
art. But very different was the reaction produced 
upon the two races by this familiarity. In the 
Greeks, it encouraged an art whose prime aim was 
to give expression to those harmonies and hints of 
perfection that lie hidden in the imperfections of 
each individual body ; so that we have from the 
Greeks those syntheses and idealizations of the 
human form which still haunt us like faint memories 
of the gods. But in the Japanese mind, the sense 
of the individual defects seems to have overpowered 
the impulse to creative idealism ; and the people, 
as a race, turned from the nude figure to the more 
easily manipulated beauties of flowing robes and 
gorgeous patterns, translating Nature into images 
7 



116 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

of an alien richness, and love into hyperboles of 
public splendour. That part of Nature which lay- 
outside themselves they could indeed cope with, 
as the lofty visions of landscape which they have 
transcribed testify ; but with a few exceptions, 
such as Toyonobu and Kiyomitsu and Kiyonaga, 
they dared not attempt the final venture of 
rationalizing the uses and aspects of the body. 
And it is because of an inadequacy whose source 
and root spring from this attitude that posterity 
will perhaps rank this art below the art of Greece, 
adjudging even the matchless subtlety and re- 
finement of these designs to be no adequate 
compensation for the absence of that frank Greek 
courage which attempted to clarify and ennoble 
the fundamental conditions of the existence of 
man. 

Toyonobu, great artist that he was, overstepped 
the national barrier and came very near to surpassing 
the finest achievements of Greek art. 



Kiyomitsu. 



Pillar Print of a Woman. 



A place for giant heads to take their rest 
Seems her pale breast. 

Her sweeping robe trails like the cloud and wind 
Storms leave behind. 

The ice of the year, and its Aprilian part, 
Sleep in her heart. 

Therefore small marvel that her footsteps be 
Like strides of Destiny ! 



I 



<r^'^ 




v^J^^^;^- 







KIYOMITSU : THE ACTOR SEGAWA KIKUXOJO AS A 
WOMAN SMOKING. 



Printed in black and three colours. Size iij > 
Signed Toiii Kiyomitsn ga. 



Plate 9. 



117 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 119 



Pillar Print of a Man. 

Out of spaces hazed with greyness, out of years whose veils 
are grey, 
With the slow majestic footsteps of a lord of far-away, 
Comes a form that out of glooming 
Rises from some old entom.bing 
To confront once more the day. 

And with splendid gesture dwarfing the confusion of our hands, 
With his ancient calm rebuking the unrest of vain demands, 
He with solemn footsteps slowly 
Passes : and his garments holy 
Leave the scent of holy lands. 

Kiyomitsu took his place as the third great head 
of the Torii line, succeeding his father Kiyomasu. 
In subject and in manner, it is 
the Torii tradition that he carries 
on. We know nothing of his life, 
save that he was born in 1735 
and died in 1785. His work falls 
almost entirely within the class of 
two- and three-colour prints. I 
know of only one hand-coloured 
print by him ; but as his dates 
denote, he lived far into the period 
of polychrome printing, and was 
a partaker in Harunobu's experi- 
ments in colour. Von Seidlitz is 
wrong in saying that no poly- 
chrome prints by Kiyomitsu are 
known ; a few exist and are very 
beautiful. He did little work after 
1765, and is to be regarded as most characteristically 
an artist of the Primitive Period — in fact one of the 
greatest. Certainly between 1755 and 1764, no one 




TORII KIYOMITSU. 



120 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

but Toyonobu could rival him ; and these two may 
be ranked the supreme designers of the three-colour 
epoch. 

The outstanding feature of Kiyomitsu's work is 
its formalism. Whatever he touches is compressed 
to a pattern, and rendered into bold hieroglyphics 
of sweeping curves. His line is simple, powerfully 
dominated by a circular movement that is singularly 
and inexplicably delightful. His colours, even while 
they remain only two or three in number, never lack 
variety and strong decorative effect. The slightness 
of the use which he makes of black is noteworthy ; 
he compensates for its absence by choosing heavy 
opaque colours of rich tone. Some authorities regard 
him as the first to employ a third colour-block. 

Kiyomitsu's work is markedly stylistic — even 
dominated by a certain mannerism ; one comes to 
recognize almost infallibly the formula he uses, and 
to regard as an old friend that peculiar swirl of 
drapery, swing of body, and artificial poise of head 
which appear, as in Plate 9, like an accepted con- 
vention throughout the larger number of his designs. 
The convention is an agreeable and highly aesthetic 
one, based on fundamental curves of great beauty. 
But the invariability with which he employs this 
formula gives Dr. Kurth some excuse for regarding 
him as a monotonous and over-estimated artist. 
Had we only Kiyomitsu's hoso-ye prints, it might 
be possible to agree with Dr. Kurth ; for these 
figures, enchanting and full of elegance as they are, 
certainly are dominated by a sameness of manner 
such as one finds in no other series of hoso-ye. But 



f--^ii 



k t 






Ptti ^^ 




KIYOMITSU : WOMAX WITH KIYOMITSU : WOMAN COMING 



BASKET HAT. 

Black and three colours. 

Size 28 X 4, 

Signed Torii Kiyomitsti ga. 



FROM BATH. 

Black and three colours. 

Size 27 X 4. 
Signed Torii Kiyoinitsu ga. 



Plate 10. 



FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 123 

the truth of Dr. Kurth's depreciations must be 
questioned if one turns to the pillar-prints, which 
constitute the real glory of Kiyomitsu's career. 
The two reproduced in Plate lo exhibit his power. 
Kiyomitsu may be regarded as one of the half- 
dozen greatest masters of the pillar-print shape of 
composition. Much of his finest work is in this 
form. Here his somewhat tight curves lengthen 
out into flowing beauty ; and the dignity always 
inherent in his drawing appears at its best. 

Kiyomitsu's rare nudes take a place close beside 
those of Toyonobu. They have a keen poetic 
charm ; and though their vigour is less marked than 
that of Toyonobu's, their grace and elegance of 
movement is at least as striking. 

The collector may find it useful to remember 
that long after Kiyomitsu's death, Kiyomine and 
Kiyofusa sometimes used the great name of Kiyomitsu 
as a signature to their own works. Only an inex- 
perienced observer could mistake these late and deca- 
dent productions for the work of the original master, 

KlYOHIRO. 
Torii Kiyohiro has been rated by some writers 
as more highly gifted than Kiyomitsu. This praise 
appears absurdly extravagant ; yet in disputing such a 
claim, one must admit the great charm of Kiyohiro's 
work. He is said to have been a pupil of Kiyonobu 
n ; his career runs parallel with that of Kiyomitsu, 
and he seems frequently to imitate that artist. The 
period of his greatest prominence was between 1745 
and 1758 ; his work is all in two or three colours. 



124 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



A delicate draughtsman, his figures have marked 
grace of poise and firmness of design. His man- 
nerism is less stereotyped than 
Kiyomitsu's ; some of his prints 
have great beauty, but he never 
reaches certain heights which Ki- 
yomitsu attained. Prints by him 
are uncommon. 

I g ^ KlYOTSUNE. 

Torii Kiyotsune produced deli- 
cate and distinguished prints in 
^, -T two or three colours, much like 

1 J^ those of Kiyomitsu. Most of his 

^ figures are characterized by a 

_^ _* I curious slenderness and exquisite- 

/f^ ness ; but they are somewhat lack- 

^ J^^ ing in vigour. After 1764 he fell 

under the influence of Harunobu 
and adopted full-colour printing, 
still retaining, however, that very 
individual type of face — a little scornful, a little 
fastidious in expression — which marks his designs. 
His work is rare. 



TORII KIYOHIRO. 



Pupils of Kiyomitsu and Toyonobu. 

Among the pupils of Kiyomitsu may be noted 
Torii Kiyosato, Torii Kiyoharu, Morotada, Kiyotoshi, 
Torii Kiyomoto, and Torii Kiyohide. Their work 
was almost contemporaneous with that of the master. 

Amano Toyonaga, Ishikawa Toyomasu, and Ishi- 
kawa Toyokuma were probably pupils of Toyonobu. 



IV 

THE SECOND 
PERIOD : 
THE EARLY 
POLYCHROME 
MASTERS 

FROM THE INVENTION 

OF POLYCHROME PRINTING 

TO THE RETIREMENT 

OF SHUNSHO 

(1764-80) 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SECOND PERIOD : THE EARLY POLYCHROME 
MASTERS 

From the Invention of Polychrome Printing to the 
Retirement of Shunsho (1764-80) 

The transition from primitive to sophisticated art is 
very like the progression of a race from its heroic 
youth to its elaborately gifted maturity. Life 
grows more complex, the material riches and the 
machinery of living become more diversified ; but it 
is still to the early days that one looks for the 
strongest development of personality and the most 
daring achievement in the face of great difficulties. 
Sophistication, in the history of an art as of a race, 
brings refinements and nuances unknown to the 
pioneers ; but it cannot intensify and may often 
encumber the spiritual force and essential genius of 
the creators. The great individuals of the earlier 
time developed all that was essential as far as it 
could be developed ; the later enlargement of scope 
is in the direction of the material and the accidental. 
In the Primitives we find the full stature of the 
spirit ; in the art of later days, with all its parade of 
processes, we shall hardly find more. 



128 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

In the First Period the initial impulse of print- 
designing manifested itself in work that was 
powerful and beautiful, but of simple technique. 
In the Second Period the barriers that confined the 
Primitives were swept away by new possibilities 
of expression. The three-colour prints gave place 
to prints in which an unlimited number of blocks 
could be employed ; and this enlargement of the 
artist's resources produced a new and splendid 
blossoming. In this Second Period the art seemed 
to hesitate midway between the forces of the 
primitive inspiration, which was one of pure and 
stately decoration, and the more naturalistic forces 
that were making ready for the Third Period, with 
its fuller rendering of the lights and spaces of life. 
The presence of both groups of forces makes this 
Second Period possibly the most interesting 
of all. 

The specific characteristics of the period are 
sharply marked. They consist, first of all, in 
technical advances — the mastery of full-colour 
printing and the realization through this process 
of the marvellous colour-dreams of the great 
masters. But beyond the technical advances there 
is a change in spiritual attitude ; the artist, hereto- 
fore content to create a pure decoration, a masterful 
mosaic that expressed his aesthetic ideals, now 
begins to adopt a more personal attitude in his 
treatment of the forces and spectacles of daily 
existence. True, he disposes these elements arbi- 
trarily ; the picture he creates is a world of 
imagination ; but as compared with the Primitives, 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 129 

he tells us more of his experience and is closer to 
our own. Even his most fanciful designs bring to 
us some remote and abstract echo of known voices. 
Lyric joy speaks through Harunobu, dramatic 
terror through Shunsho, splendour through Koriusai, 
mystery through Buncho ; and though the medium 
be a symbol, and its connection with reality as 
remote as that of music, yet by the vividness of the 
emotion evoked in us we may judge of the definite- 
ness of the artist's motive, and realize through colour 
and line an intangible human voice. 

The stream of art history here flowed in two main 
channels. One was the Katsukawa School, headed 
by Shunsho, which like the older Torii School 
devoted itself chiefly to the representation of actors. 
The other was the school of Harunobu, whose 
gracious designs of women were the most novel 
productions of the period. A third school was 
founded by Toyoharu and a fourth by Shigemasa ; 
but the real importance of these two schools de- 
veloped only in a later epoch. During this period 
the great Torii School may be said to have remained 
dormant ; it was to awaken in the Third Period to a 
new splendour in Kiyonaga. 

There is a passage from a contemporary record 
that throws light on the temper of the people and 
the artists at this time. I have freely translated it, 
with the courteous permission of Dr. Julius Kurth 
(Kurth's " Harunobu," R. Piper & Co., Munich), from 
his German rendering of a unique manuscript book 
in his possession, which appears to have been written 
by the poet Yukura Sanjin, and illustrated by 



130 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Harunobu in 1769. The book is a whimsical, devil- 
may-care production of the lightest sort ; but from 
its pages the glitter and surge and laughter of Yedo 
holiday life rise with a far-away yet curiously 
distinct echo. 

An Extract from "The Story of the 
Honey-Sweetmeat Vendor, Dohei" 

" Dohei hails from Oshu. Upon his head he wears 
a cap ; and his mouth sends up a song when in the 
Capital of the East he vends his honey-sweetmeats. 
His cape is of tiger-skin, and bears a suspicious 
resemblance to the loin-apron of the Devil. His 
umbrella is of scarlet crepe, and recalls the plumed 
spears of the festival-guards. As his coat of arms 
he chose a Devil's head and a skeleton ; upon his 
outer robe he wrote the sign, ' Dohei, Dohei.' While 
you buy his honey-sweetmeats, he sings a song of 
a new style, and ends it with the refrain, ' Dohei, 
Dohei ! ' Therefore the name of Dohei has become 
known everywhere. Even the smallest children all 
sing this song in chorus over and over a thousand 
times. If he sells his honey-sweetmeats in the 
Eastern part of the city, the people in the Western 
streets are furious ; if he sells them in the Southern 
quarter, the people in the Northern streets are 
furious. For then they want to know why he came 
to them so late. 

" If on the three hundred and sixty days of the 
year one goes, day in and day out, through all the 
eight hundred and eight streets, one finds a tavern 
at every five paces ; and it is as if this city had been 



I 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 131 

changed into a pond of rice-wine. One cannot take 
ten steps without coming upon a shop in which whole 
mountains of rice-cakes and other confections are 
offered. If one hears in the distance an almost 
heavenly music, it is the song of a lady to the strum 
of a guitar. If there is a rattling like peals of 
thunder, it is the ox-carts on the side streets. 
People with coiffures shaped like the leaf of the 
ginko-tree roll up their outer robes and jostle 
shoulder to shoulder. Ladies with girdles of spun 
gold and long-sleeved girlish dresses sway their hips ; 
and their garments, coloured like the graining of 
wood, flow as do torrents of Spring. Their hats of 
green paper resemble a clump of trees in Summer. 
And as they wander along, the hems of their robes 
flutter open, and the blood-red silk linings gleam like 
maple foliage — though it is not yet Autumn ! The 
festive white material of their inner robes shines like 
snow — though it is not yet Winter ! If it were, they 
would be muffled to their very noses with crepe veils. 
They have arranged their hair as if surmounted by a 
cap, like tiers of little chrysanthemums. At their 
thighs sparkle tobacco-wallets ornamented with silver 
and gold. 

"The black-and-white prints of earlier days are 
antiquated now, and the only thing people care for 
is the newly-devised gorgeousness of the Eastern 
Brocade Pictures. Musical plays are no longer to be 
seen ; instead, you go to the music-girls and the 
dancing-girls in the taverns. The young people want 
lively entertainment, and visit the wine-shops. Out 
of a vase in which, according to the ancient custom, 



132 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

flowers were formerly placed, lots are now drawn to 
fix upon the day for a party ; while according to the 
fashionable arrangement of flowers in the hanging 
jars, the flowers look like arrows from a bow. The 
vendors of fritters call out, ' Celebrated Pasties ! 
Celebrated Pasties ! ' and boast upon the brilliant 
paper signs of the just-opened booths, ' Headquarters! 
Headquarters ! ' Handkerchiefs at four coppers apiece 
hang at the loins of the servants of Samurais. The 
song of the New Year's dancers rings out among 
people who hitherto had sung only folk-songs. The 
caligraphist studies the Nagao style ; the poet learns 
by heart the poems of the Chinese epoch, and the 
minstrel the style of the Manyo anthology. To 
obtain new remedies for his stock the doctor draws 
upon the old school for all kinds of herbs, and cures 
eyes and noses with them — ^just as pumpkins are 
perfected into melons. Often the priest of Buddha 
wanders, an object of derision, through the streets in 
the darkness of night in search of a girl. To be sure, 
he is a very learned man ; but what leads more easily 
to dangerous labyrinths than love ? 

" The theatres in the Sakai Street give perform- 
ances continuously. The reconstruction of the 
Yoshiwara is to be finished in a few days, and people 
come and go there only to drink and to sing. They 
draw water from the floods of the Sumida River, but 
it will not be drained dry ! They view again and 
again the flowers of the Asuka River, but these also 
are without end ! The Shenshuraku Theatre enlivens 
the public, and upon the Banzairaku stage man's life 
is idealized. So all are happy — like green firs that 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 133 

become thicker and thicker and put forth new 
needles." 

Into this crowded world of exuberant life came 
Harunobu and his contemporaries — into this under- 
world, if you will, but an underworld more beautiful 
and sun-drenched than any known to our great 
Western cities. Instead of the bar in the slum they 
had the tea-house on the river-bank ; instead of the 
prize-fight they had the cherry festival ; for them, 
vice put on robes of a certain stately beauty ; their 
stage was marked by the same ennobling absence of 
realism that distinguished the stage of the Greeks. 
The holiday spirit of the hour seems more sponta- 
neous than ours ; their hearts seem less troubled by 
spiritual confusions. And manifestly their under- 
world knew beauty and brought forth an art that is 
now a universal human treasure ; while our under- 
world has been, with the rarest of exceptions, wholly 
sterile. 

One of the most important of the underworld 
institutions which the prints of this period depict is 
the theatre. Though Harunobu turned aside from 
it, his great contemporary Shunsho and the whole 
body of Shunsho's followers found most of their 
material there. 

The popular theatre had sprung into importance in 
the days of Moronobu. Previous to that time, the 
classic lyric drama of the aristocracy, called the No, 
had flourished in the secluded palaces of great nobles ; 
but the mob was obliged to divert itself with nothing 
more interesting than jugglers and street performers. 



134 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Therefore when the theatre first came into being, in 
the river-bed of Kyoto, it achieved great popularity ; 
and when later it was transferred to Yedo, it rose 
during the Genroku Period (1688- 1703) to a position 
of passionate favour. It appears never to have had a 
very savoury moral odour ; and before long it became 
associated with so much corruptness that it pre- 
sented a serious problem for the Tokugawa rulers. 
In 1643, 3-S a corrective measure, they had decreed the 
exclusion of female actors from the stage. From this 
time on, only men trod the Japanese boards ; the 
female roles were taken by male actors whose skill 
in this impersonation is said to have been extra- 
ordinary. 

The status of a great actor in the hearts of the 
people was not very different from that of a successful 
prize-fighter among us to-day. He was a popular 
idol ; his movements were the subject of the eager 
curiosity of the gaping multitude ; but his social rank 
was of the lowest. The prints of a later date show 
us pictures of actors with their gay companions on 
boating-parties or tea-house picnics, surrounded by 
inquisitive throngs of spectators. Famous and 
greatly sought after as these actors were, they 
occupied positions of even less esteem than the 
English players in the days of Queen Elizabeth. 
Nothing so well illustrates their ostracism from any 
kind of society as the words used by one of the 
greatest of actor-painters, Shunsho, in the preface to 
a book of drawings representing actors : '* To be sure, 
I love the theatre, and greatly enjoy being a 
spectator, but I have no connection with the actors 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 135 

themselves^ and do not knozv them in private lifer 
Even Shunsho, who had created the heroic designs of 
these men in their great roles, dared not acknowledge 
himself as their familiar. 

When they appeared on the stage, the faces of the 
actors were frequently painted with startling streaks 
of red and white, an effect reproduced in some of the 
prints. The elaborate robes worn when they repre- 
sented heroic figures of bygone ages formed superb 
material for the designs of the artists. The Japanese 
stage of to-day probably does not differ very much 
from what it was in Shunsho's time ; and we still see 
on it that florid elaboration of gesture, bombastic 
delivery, and intensification of facial expression which 
the prints have perpetuated. 

The actors were divided into clans or schools ; the 
name of a famous head of a clan would be handed 
down for generations from master to pupil. Thus 
there were many of the name of Danjuro, Hanshiro, 
and Kikunojo in succession, who were not related to 
each other by blood. Certain clans such as the 
Kikunojo specialized exclusively in women's roles. 
Each clan had its mon or crest, worn on the sleeve, 
and each actor had a personal mon ; in the prints 
these generally appear. In Plate 20, for example, the 
circle with eight crossed arrow-buts indicates the mon 
of Nakamura Matsuye ; in other prints, the three 
great concentric squares of Danjuro, the trisected 
concentric circles of Hanshiro, or the iris within a 
circle of Kikunojo (Plate 9), are easily identified. 

In the hands of Shunsho and his followers the 
figures of these actors were used as the material for 
8 



136 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

brilliant designs. For the moment, however, we 
must return to the foremost artist of this period — one 
who never loved the actors — Harunobu. 



Harunobu. 

Figure of a Girl. 

Ye winds that somewhere in the West — 
In gulfs of sunset, isles of rest — 
Rise dewy from prenatal sleep 
To strew with little waves the deep — 
Surely it is your breath that stirs 
These fluttering gauzy robes of hers I 

Come whence ye may, I marvel not 
That ye are lured to seek this spot ; 
Your tenuous scarcely breathed powers 
Sway not the sturdier garden flowers, 
And had unmanifest gone by 
Save that she feels them visibly. 

O little winds, her little hands 
In time with tunes from fairy-lands 
Are moving ; and her bended head 
Knows nothing of the long years sped 
Since heaven more near to earth was hung, 
And gods lived, and the world was young. 

Her inner robe of tenderest fawn 
In cool, faint fountains of the dawn 
Was dyed ; and her long outer dress 
Borrows its luminous loveliness 
From some clear bowl with water filled 
In which one drop of wine was spilled. 

Peace folds her in its deeps profound ; 
Her shy glance lifts not from the ground ; 
And through this garden's still retreat 
She moves with tripping silver feet 
Whose tranced grace, where'er she strays. 
Turns all the days to holy days. 




HARUXOBU : YOUNG GIRL IX WIXD. 

Polychrome, from eight blocks. Size ii x S. Signed Susitki Hani uobtt ga. 
Gookin Collection. 



137 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 139 



Come ! let us softly steal away. 
For what can we, whose hearts are grey, 
Bring to her dreaming paradise ? 
A chill shall mock her from our eyes ; 
A cloud shall dim this radiant air ; 
Come ! for our world is otherwhere. 

But O ye little winds that blow 
From golden islands long ago 
Lost to our searching in the deep 
Of dreams between the shores of sleep — 
Ye shall her happy playmates be, 
Fluttering her robes invisibly. 

The few available fragments of information about 
the life of Susuki Harunobu can be briefly stated. 
Born between 1725 and 1730, he lived in Yedo 
all his life in a house near the river. In 1764 he 
perfected a new and epoch-making treatment of 
colour-print technique, and died in 1770, not much 
more than forty years of age. 
We may, where so little is known, 
willingly follow Dr. Kurth in his 
ingenious tracing of a romantic 
link between Harunobu and the 
hamlet of Kasamori, whose pine- 
trees, red temple-torii, and beau- 
tiful tea-house waitress 0-Sen 
haunt his work recurrently ; but 
we must be content to regard 
this as at least half fancy. 
Harunobu's direct teacher was 
Shigenaga, and he was influenced 
early by Toyonobu ; but it was 
to Sukenobu and Kiyomitsu that he turned for the 
inspiration of those characteristic figures which he 




SUSUKI HARUNOBU. 



140 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

created during the six great years of his real 
activity. 

Harunobu's work before the year 1764 is relatively 
unimportant. It consists of prints of actors and 
legendary subjects, printed in two or three colours ; a 
few of his hoso-ye prints of this period have charming 
delicacy of line and colour, and at least one of his 
actor pillar-prints is a work of notable dignity ; but 
upon the whole his work is not very individual. Any 
one of a dozen of Shigenaga's pupils might have 
done almost as well. Before 1764 these men were 
all his equals; after 1764 he took a step which few 
could keep pace with and which none could outstrip. 

In 1764 he brought forth that synthesis of the 
resources of his art which was to shake the Ukioye 
world. Whether he was the actual inventor of poly- 
chrome printing is not certain ; some authorities 
attribute the invention to an engraver named 
Kinroku ; but it is very clear that Harunobu was 
the first to seize upon and realize the possibilities 
of the discovery. Some technical hindrance, such 
as the difficulty of securing perfect register from 
many blocks on the wet stretching sheets, had 
prevented the earlier completion of the process ; 
and it is possible that it was a printer who discovered 
the simple device needed to overcome the difficulty. 
This, however, is a matter of mere mechanics and 
has no bearing upon the question of the real glory 
of Harunobu. What is important is that he seized 
the new technique and made out of it an instrument 
responsive to every subtlest breath of his beauty- 
haunted spirit. 



i'^'''^''-'-i^i}fiA.tm 




HARUXOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAX-VENDOR. 
Polychrome. Size ii x 7|. Signed Harunobu ga. Chandler Collection. 



.F/aie 12. 



141 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 143 

The old three-colour prints had achieved fine 
effects by means of powerfully conceived but essen- 
tially simple mosaics of colour. Now Harunobu 
turned the three-stringed lute into the violin, capable 
of expressing the most delicate modulations of tone. 
Beginning with combinations of only four or five 
colours, he gradually increased the number of blocks 
used. It is certain that he used eight blocks on 
at least one 1765 calendar print. In the end he 
had at his command a palette which, by the use 
of no less than twelve or fifteen blocks, and with 
the limitless number of shades obtainable by super- 
imposing one colour upon another, made the whole 
rainbow his. Constant experiment marked his further 
progress. We have, for example, one print which 
he originally printed from eight blocks, and later 
varied by increasing the blocks to ten, and still 
later to thirteen. From year to year an ever fresh 
succession of complex colour-harmonies emanated 
from his fertile brain. 

Until the invention of polychrome printing, Haru- 
nobu had not adequately expressed himself; now, 
having found his true instrument, he played divinely. 
The year 1765 was a Jubilee year, celebrating the 
nine-hundredth anniversary of the entrance of Suga- 
wara Michigane, the great statesman, painter, and 
humanist, to the Court of the Emperor^ This circum- 
stance, in connection with the desire of literary men 
to present to their friends specimens of the new prints 
as New Year cards, led Harunobu to produce a 
number of dated calendar-prints of this year — a 
fortunate occurrence which has been of great aid 



144 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

to students of his work. The theory that these 
dated prints are the expression of Harunobu's naive 
exultation over the new discovery is now generally 
discredited. Since the calendars are dated 1765, 
Mr. Gookin's suggestion that they were probably 
made in the last months of 1764 seems reason- 
able ; and this date must therefore be regarded as 
marking the beginning of polychrome printing. 

The brilliant new prints fittingly ushered in the 
festal year. And the public was not too busy with 
its celebrations to take note of the change. The 
new manner with its wealth of colour-beauty won 
instant popularity ; and under the name of " Brocade 
Pictures of the Eastern Capital " grew to such fame 
that by 1767 prints in the old style were almost 
driven out of the market, and Harunobu was 
unquestioned lord of Ukioye. 

It is not strange that in the glow of success and 
ambition he should have put behind him his old 
actor-pictures. " I am a Japanese painter," he wrote 
proudly ; " why should I paint the portraits of this 
vulgar herd ? " And at this moment feeling himself 
akin to the great classical tradition whose refined 
beauties had been handed down from ancient China 
mingled with the beauties of poets and sages, he 
determined that he would lift from the Ukioye 
School the stigma of vulgarity which the theatre 
had given it, and invest it with some of that gentle 
cultivation which fills like light the old Chinese paint- 
ings of Ming gardens. Therefore he turned his 
energies to the depiction of another world than 
the theatre — the life of aristocratic ladies, of young 







HARUXOBU : GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS. 
Size II X 8. Signed Hannwbu ga- Chandler Collection. 



J'/afe 13. 



J 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 147 

lovers, of those famed beauties who in humbler 
station were the flowers and sunshine of the tea- 
house and the festival. Plate 14 portrays one of 
these. His method of handling the figures — a peculiar 
mingling of naivete and sophistication, like that of 
a minstrel singing incredible enchanted legends 
with complete seriousness — was a new and never- 
recovered note in the history of Ukioye. 

From this time on, during six years, Harunobu 
produced a series of prints whose grace is unsur- 
. passable. The firm and refined strokes of his brush 
endowed with a fresh charm all that was lovely in 
the flowing draperies and serene faces of the young 
girls of Japan. He was the painter of youth. The 
type which he introduced was the slender and 
gracious embodiment of youthful girlhood. And 
an indescribable delicacy and purity of manner 
clothes as with clear light these girl-figures of his. 
His draperies, as in Plate ii, are never drawn 
naturalistically, but always with a certain conven- 
tionalization that produces folds and swirls more 
abstractly beautiful than a literal rendering. He 
for the first time in colour-printing made a practice 
of giving to his figures a background that exhibited 
fully the scene of their daily lives. Instead of the 
heroic figures of the Primitives, stalking through 
space in colossal grandeur, he drew the familiar forms 
of everyday existence nestling among their natural 
surroundings. The world he pictures is, however, 
one of mortals who hardly know the burdens of 
mortality. Like the women of Botticelli, they seem 
to poise in an atmosphere of more rarefied loveliness 



148 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

than anything we know in reality. Rich as may 
have been the beauty of the tea-house girl, O-Sen, • 
whom Harunobu loved and painted, and of the little 
seller of cosmetics, O-Fuji, who appears many 
times in his pictures, they were but the starting- 
point, the exciting agency, from which Harunobu 
passed on into a secret fanciful world of his own 
to evoke his dream-maidens. Half of the charm of 
these figures, such as the one in Plate 12, lies in this 
unreal and unhuman impression they make ; they 
are not Japanese women or any women, but living 
fairy-tales, butterfly creatures out of nowhere. All 
that is joyous and playful in the Japanese spirit lifts 
them on wings of fantasy into regions of universal 
delight. They are the most fragrant flowers of 
Japanese art. 

It follows that Harunobu's subjects are almost 
always light and trivial scenes — a girl playing with 
a cat, a young man and a maiden walking amiably 
together, young girls engaged in some delicate occu- 
pation, or, as in Plate 13, pausing in pensive reverie. 
A gentle joy pervades most of them, or at least a 
gravity so light that it is nearer joy than melancholy. 
Harunobu does not handle these scenes with any 
especial insight into life ; they are not windows 
through which we may look and see the human souls 
of the people he portrays. They are nothing more 
than gay, pleasing moments — records of fortunate 
hours — froth and foam over the real deeps of life. 

Yet as the spectator allows the pure and delicate 
atmosphere of one of these creations to enter his 
spirit, he gradually becomes aware that not this 





HARUNOBU : COURTESAN DETAINIXG A PASSING SAMURAI. 
Size II X 8. Signed Harunohu ga. 



Plate 14. 



149 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 151 

trivial scene, not this light episode, was Harunobu's 
real theme ; his real theme was the great harmonics 
of colour and line. Out of colour and line his im- 
measurable genius evoked lofty improvisations. He 
dedicated the fervour of his passion and his vision to 
the creation of these orchestrations of tone, these 
modulated arabesques of contour. Beyond his 
cheerful groups, beyond his felicitous arrangements, 
lies the history of his prodigious essay to impose 
his sense of beauty upon one section of chaos. 
Kurth is quite right when he calls him "the great 
virtuoso of colour." 

Most of Harunobu's prints are of small size, almost 
square. In this form his refinement found its most 
perfect expression. If we would see an aspect ot 
Harunobu that is of more impressive proportions, 
and realize that scope as well as daintiness was in 
him, we must turn to certain rare pillar-prints which 
were done chiefly in the years immediately preced- 
ing his untimely death. Here dignity combines 
with grace, and an exalted sweep of composition 
adds nobility to that exquisite colour which here no 
less than in his small prints finds place. Two of these 
pillar-prints, reproduced in Plate 1 5, may serve to illus- 
trate this last phase of Harunobu's greatest triumph. 

The first print is a soft grey and lavender study of 
a girl. Within the long, narrow space, against a 
background of cool unbroken grey, rises the figure, 
whose bent, pensive head looks down at the ball she 
is dangling before a cat at her feet. Her hair, a 
mass of strong black against the clear grey back- 
ground, is drawn in a conventionalized manner that 



152 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

is perhaps the noblest formula ever devised for the 
painting of hair — as pure of line as a Greek helmet. 
Drooping from her slender shoulders fall robes whose 
slow curves seem moulded by the touch of faint and 
gentle airs that breathe around her. The long drapery 
is interwoven with hints of mauve melting into rose — 
more like ghosts of the palette than colours — and 
touches of translucent salmon and amber and grey 
are repeated like an arabesque of lights down the 
folds. The folds sweep in great restful curves like 
those of vines hanging in festoons from summer 
branches. At the girl's girdle a strong note of dull 
green strikes like a bass chord across the composition ; 
and smaller spots of the same colour carry this motive 
diminishingly down to the bottom of the picture. 

It is a sentiment, an emotion, a dream — as much 
an abstraction as a musical composition. In the lines 
of the dress, in the poise of the head, in the limpid 
tones of the whole picture, is secreted the dwell- 
ing-place of a peace, a solemnity, an awe never 
to be forgotten. It is reminiscent of the grandeur 
of the Primitives, but more etherialized ; and there 
lingers about it still, persisting from earlier times, 
the penumbra of that hierarchal purity and spirituality 
peculiar to archaic art. Like those strange and 
memorable archaic statues of the Priestesses in the 
Museum of the Akropolis at Athens, like the fres- 
coes of Giotto at Assisi, it holds the secret of an 
untainted beauty that is lost to later artists. 

The second pillar-print is one which, following the 
opinion of Professor Fenollosa and Mr. Gookin, may 
be regarded as one of the supreme triumphs of 








.'«^^' 



•:HARUNOBU : SHIRAI GOM- 
PACHI DISGUISED AS A 
KOMUSO. 

Size 27 X 4J. 
Signed Stisiiki Hixriinobii ga. 



HARUXOBU : GIRL 
PLAYIXC; WITH 
KITTEN. 

Size 26 X 45. 
Signed Siisitki Haniiwbn ga. 



JPlate Is. 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 155 

Harunobu's career, and one of the greatest prints 
we know. It represents Shirai Gompachi, the 
white-robed lover of the beautiful Komurasaki, 
wandering in disguise with the basket-hat and flute 
of a koniuso or dishonoured Samurai. There is no 
background ; against the clear white paper the long 
lines of the tall figure flow in curves of jet black 
and purple-grey, with here and there lights of orange 
and white. By a simplicity of selection that is more 
than Greek, Harunobu has woven from these few 
curves an effect that is like an incantation. It has 
in it the power to reach into the secret storehouses 
of the spectator's emotion and awaken echoes from 
those intimations of eternal perfection which haunt 
every heart. Fenollosa writes : " There is something 
unearthly about its line themes, orchestrated in black 
and ghost-tints, which lifts one to the infinities of 
Beethoven's purest melodies. The dreamy clarinet- 
player seems to droop and melt away into regions 
of sublimity where no earthly ear shall follow his 
dying chords. Thus indeed we are glad at last to 
have Harunobu pass, transfigured, from our vision." 

Pillar Print by Harunobu. 

From an infinite distance, the ghostly music ! 
Few and slender the tones, of delicate silver, 
As stars are broidered on the veil of evening. . . . 

He passes by, the flute and the dreaming player — 
Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast ; 
His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing. 

Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly music 
Returns — in slender tones of delicate silver, 
As stars are broidered on the veil of evening. 



156 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Certain puzzles for the collector and student arise 
in connection with Harunobu. 

This is the first knotty point. Shiba Kokan, a 
contemporary artist who outlived Harunobu by forty- 
eight years, is obscurely connected with Harunobu's 
work. " Look out when you buy Harunobu prints ! " 
he writes in his memoirs, published long after his 
death. " A great portion of the most popular ones 
are skilfully forged, and the forger was I, Shiba 
Kokan ! " This warning holds good to-day, and in 
many cases no one can say with confidence whether 
certain sheets are by Shiba Kokan or Harunobu. 
Kokan claims, in particular, to have been the author 
of those with transparent draperies, those done in 
the Chinese manner, and those in which snow on 
bamboos is rendered by embossing without outline 
blocks. All these and other characteristic beauties 
of Harunobu's work he would annex, and it is 
doubtful if we shall ever know whether he is the 
greatest liar or the greatest forger in history. 
Probably his statements must be regarded as partly 
true. Until we know, however, every print signed 
Harunobu is suspect ; for if Shiba Kokan could 
deceive the public of that day, we shall not be 
likely to detect his forgeries. There is only one 
consolation for the collector : if the prints of Shiba 
Kokan, signed Harunobu, are as beautiful as those 
of Harunobu, then not the collector is the sufferer, 
but only the unfortunate person who tries to write an 
accurate account of this hopeless entanglement. 

Other forgers, contemporaneous or slightly later, 
probably took advantage of Harunobu's popularity : 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 157 

coarse reprints from recut blocks turn up frequently 
in the market ; and, worst of all, very fine modern 
forgeries and imitations of his work abound. These 
last two classes are the only ones that need cause 
the collector anxiety ; they should of course be 
guarded against with the utmost care, for they are 
quite worthless. Their impure and muddy colours 
generally betray them to the practised eye. No 
means of detecting them is safe for the inexperienced 
amateur except a minute comparison with an un- 
questioned original impression of the same print. 
On the other hand, the contempo- 
raneous forgeries, if beautiful, are 
no inconsiderable treasures. 

The name Kyosen furnishes 
another puzzle. It is signed to 
prints unmistakably by Harunobu, 
to prints unmistakably not by 
him, and to prints which he also 
signs. The solution seems to be 
that Kyosen is simply the name 
of the printer or engraver who did work for Harunobu 
and for other designers. Kyosen himself sometimes 
designed prints, but in such cases he signed distinctly 
as artist. The signature Kyosen does not, there- 
fore, indicate a separate artist, and its presence on 
Harunobu's prints need not cause doubts as to 
Harunobu's authorship. Senga, a printer, and Taka- 
hashi Gyokushi and Takahashi Rosen, engravers, also 
signed certain of Harunobu's prints. 

A further difficulty arises in the relation of 
Harunobu to Koriusai, an artist whom we shall 




158 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

soon treat by himself. At times his work comes 
so close to Harunobu's style that earlier authorities 
believed his name to be merely a later signature of 
Harunobu. This position is now entirely discredited, 
and it is agreed that Koriusai was a distinct person, 
a friend and successor of Harunobu. But it is not so 
sure that Koriusai may not have signed certain of his 
own designs with Harunobu's name after Harunobu's 
death ; the striking resemblances of some such sheets 
to Koriusai's work makes one unwilling to regard 
the relation between the two as settled. In the case 
of certain unsigned prints, it is impossible to deter- 
mine with assurance which of the two was the 
creator. As a rule, however, the colour-schemes of 
the two are totally different, Koriusai running 
characteristically to schemes in which blue and 
orange are dominant. Dr. Kurth seems to think 
it barely possible that prints signed " Koriu " may 
be by Harunobu ; but this theory is untenable, 
both because the internal evidence of the prints is 
against it, several of Koriusai's most characteristic 
prints being thus signed, and because of the difficulty 
of believing that Harunobu, the greatest of living 
Ukioye artists, should at the height of his fame have 
signed to his work the name of a younger and less 
noted contemporary. 

Those prints in the Harunobu manner which are 
unsigned and unsealed also offer perplexities, since 
we must look entirely to internal evidence to discover 
whether they are by Harunobu. 

Harunobu's work is among the most highly prized 
in the whole list. The great collections have many 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 159 

of his prints, but in the market one finds the fine 
ones to be limited in number. In his case, even 
more than in the case of other artists, perfect con- 
dition is a vital requirement. For, in the process of 
fading, his prints lose that delicate colour-orchestra- 
tion which is their supreme glory. The same changes 
in tone that would hardly detract from the beauty 
of a fine Kiyomitsu might easily rob a fine Harunobu 
of most of its significance. If one has once seen the 
copies in such collections as that of Mr. Frederick 
W. Gookin, of Chicago, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, of 
Evanston, Messrs. William S. Spaulding and John 
T. Spaulding, of Boston, or Mr. Howard Mansfield 
of New York, one loses all interest in the battered 
riff-raff of the dealers' counters. 

KORIUSAI. 

Koriusai speaks. 

Let whoso will take sheets as wide 
As some great wrestler's mountain-back 
Space cannot hide 
His lack. 

Take thou the panel, being strong. 
'Tis as a girl's arm fashioned right — 
As slender and divinely long 
And white. 

That tall and narrow icy space 
Gives scope for all the brush beseems. 
And who shall ask a wider place 
For dreams? 

It is an isle amid the tide — 
A chink wherethrough shines one lone star — 
A cell where calms of heaven hide 
Afar. 



160 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

One chosen curve of beauty wooed 
From out the harsh chaotic world 
Shall there in solitude 
Be furled. 

The narrow door shall be so strait 
Life cannot vex, with troubled din, 
Beauty, beyond that secret gate 
Shut in. 

Lo ! I will draw two lovers there, 
Alone amid their April hours, 

With lines as drooping and as fair 
As flowers. 

I will make Spring to circle them 
Like a faint aureole of delight. 
Their luminous youth and joy shall stem 
The night. 

And men shall say : Behold ! he chose, 
From Time's wild welter round him strown. 
This hour ; and paid for its repose 
His own. 



Koriusai's life is shrouded in those mists prevalent 
in the cases of most Ukioye artists. It is known that 
he was a Samurai, or feudal retainer of knightly rank ; 
upon the death of his master, Tsuchiya, he became, 
as was the custom, a ronin — that is, a retainer with- 
out a lord — and established himself near the pic- 
turesque Ryogoku Bridge in Yedo as a painter. He 
originally used the name Haruhiro. Shigenaga was 
his first teacher, Harunobu his second ; his work can 
safely be dated between 1770 and 1781. By the end 
of this period Kiyonaga was beginning to advance 
achievements that eclipsed Koriusai's. As Fenollosa 
points out, it was Koriusai's misfortune to collide 
with Harunobu at the beginning and with Kiyonaga 



7 






'KORIUSAI : MOTHER AND 
BOY. 



Size 28 X 4|. Signed Koriii g 



KORIUSAI : TWO LOVERS IN 
THE FIELDS — SPRING 
CUCKOO. 

Size 27 X 4^. Signed Koiiitsai ga. 



.Plate 16. 



161 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 163 



at the end of his career ; could we obliterate those 
two, we might think of Koriusai as "the most beautiful 
Ukioye designer." 

Koriusai was already working in Harunobu's 
manner at the time of the master's death ; and after- 
ward he continued Harunobu's experiments. His 
characteristic device in colour is the predominance of 
a strong orange pigment, based on lead, which when 
originally applied had the utmost brilliance, but 
which now is frequently changed 
by chemical decomposition into a 
rich mottled black. Combining 
this orange with a blue of his 
own devising, he obtained novel 
and striking effects. 

Koriusai's small prints have 
often a beauty almost equal to 
Harunobu's, but they lack indi- 
viduality of invention. They never 
surpass the triumphs of the older 
master in this form. Koriusai 
seldom can catch Harunobu's koriusai. 

perfect grace and repose, his luminous atmosphere 
and subtle colour. But in his large sheets he pro- 
duced a few compositions whose elaborate magni- 
ficence is a new and individual achievement. The 
styles in hair-dressing which came into vogue at this 
time were no small element in enabling him to create 
his stately figures ; the wide lines of the coiffure, 
more solid and massive than in Harunobu's day, lent 
itself admirably to strong decorative treatment. In 
a series of large sheets called "Designs of Spring 
9 




I 



164 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Greenery," each picture representing an Oiran and 
her two or more young attendants, some of the 
prints are disfigured by the heaviness of the faces ; 
but others, from which this exaggeration is absent, 
are of almost unparalleled splendour in colour, even 
though somewhat monotonous in their repetitions. 
One of this type, in the Morse Collection, Evanston 
(described at No. 155 of Fenollosa's Ketcham Cata- 
logue) is surely one of the greatest prints in the 
world. Some of Koriusai's designs of birds and 
other animals, occasionally printed with mica back- 
grounds, are admirable compositions. 

But Koriusai's distinctive glory lies in the sphere 
of pillar-prints, of which five are reproduced in Plates 
16, 17, and 18. This form of composition is one of 
the most interesting and exacting to be found in the 
art of any race ; the tall sheet, generally about 28 
inches high and only 5 inches wide, furnishes a mere 
ribbon of space that taxes all the resources of a de- 
signer. It is like a Greek frieze placed on end ; but 
whereas the frieze gives space for a multitude of pro- 
cessional figures, and is essentially a stage for the 
depiction of a social pageant, this slim panel demands 
the exclusion of all but a few significant lines. In 
this particular it is the finest of art-forms. It exacts 
the quintessence of selection — one narrow glimpse of 
some cross-section of life. Its limitations are like 
those of the lyric, requiring a concentrated and finely 
chosen vision. 

The shape was first devised by Okumura Masanobu 
as a modification of the wider and shorter sheets com- 
monly used by the Primitives for their large pictures. 



1 









I'i, 



B 



KORIUSAI : TWO LADIES. 
-Size 29 X 5. Signed A'anzj tfa. 



JPlate 17. 




KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG. 

Size 26 X 5. Signed A'orfzfsa/^fl. 



165 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 167 

As is often the case in the evolution of a fine art- 
form, it was not Masanobu's mere whim, but struc- 
tural exigencies, that prompted the invention, the 
need being to provide long narrow pictures that 
could be hung upon the square wooden pillar of the 
Japanese house. Kiyomitsu and Toyonobu used this 
shape admirably ; and the final and most perfect 
form for its dimensions was fixed and brought into 
general use by Harunobu. It became a favourite 
shape among the greatest of the later artists ; and no 
small number of their supreme achievements are in 
this form. To the modern European eye, no other 
seems so distinctively characteristic of the special 
Japanese genius. 

Pillar-prints are almost invariably works of the 
first importance — -pieces de resistance^ deliberate and 
studied productions, representing the best effort and 
highest powers of the artist. For they were intended 
to be mounted and rolled, like kakemono ; and the 
artist could therefore foresee for them a degree of 
attention that he could hardly expect in the case of 
the loose square sheets. The peculiar shape is in 
itself so interesting and beautiful, and so ringing a 
challenge to the powers of the designer, that in many 
cases the best work of the artist is to be found only 
in this form. 

Pillar-prints are to-day far rarer than prints of the 
square variety. They were probably produced in 
editions of smaller numbers than the square prints ; 
and, further, the use to which they were put as 
hanging pictures exposed them to hazardous vicissi- 
tudes and generally resulted in eventual destruction. 



168 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Koriusai's variations on the limited themes whose 
treatment is possible in this narrow space display 
daring, originality, and power of concentrated selec- 
tion. He is the supreme master of the pillar-print ; 
no one else has produced so many fine ones, and 
practically all his finest work is in this form. The 
infinite variety of his designs and the fertility of his 
invention make a series of his pillar-prints one of the 
most absorbing features of a fine collection. In one 
print (Plate 17), he dashes the intense black line of a 
screen down through the middle of his picture and 
sets the delicate eddies of a child's and a young girl's 
garments playing around its base. In a second 
(Plate 18), a girl in robes of gorgeous colour stands 
like a calm peacock, with glowing orange combs 
alight in her hair ; while in a third (Plate 16), the 
whole space waves and sings with the forms of 
grasses, a flying cuckoo, and a maiden carried in the 
arms of her lover through fields of spring. And in 
a fourth (Plate 17), he draws the figures of two 
women, one behind and a little above the other, the 
one in the background luminous with soft neutral 
tints, the one in the foreground robed in a black 
whose intensity cuts sharply through the otherwise 
monotonous sweetness of the picture. To the grace 
of Harunobu, Koriusai has here added a vigour all his 
own, and a richness surpassing that of his teacher. 

To-day Koriusai's small prints are rather rare, as 
are also the birds and the large-size sheets. His 
pillar-prints, which are his greatest works, were pro- 
duced in such numbers that, contrary to the rule 
that applies to the pillar-prints of all other designers, 




XV^^ 






^ /: 




SHIGEMASA : TWO LADIES. 



Size 284 X 5. 
Unsigned. 



KORIUSAI : A COURTESAN. 

Size 27 X 4%. 
Signed Koriusai ga. 



169 



I 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 171 

a good many of them have survived. It is still 
possible to secure examples that are among the 
foremost of all print treasures. 

Other Followers of Harunobu. 
SUSUKI Harushige is reported to have been the 
son and pupil of Harunobu. The few prints of his 
that are known have a grace of 
line that might well be a son's 
heritage, if such things were 
inheritable. The unholy rascal 
Shiba Kokan alleges that this 
name was one which he himself 
used, as well as Harunobu's ; it 
is reported, on the other hand, 
that it is merely Koriusai's early 
name. It is probable that Ko- 

, , 1 , ,. 1 HARUSHIGE. 

kans statement must be believed. 

Shiba Kokan has already been mentioned as the 
forger of Harunobu's work. His ability needs no 
further recommendation when we admit that we 
cannot with certainty tell his prints from Harunobu's. 
This is his chief title to fame. He was born in 1747 
and died in 18 18. During his life he signed many 
names to his work and attempted many manners. 
From the Dutch at Nagasaki he learned something 
of the rules of European perspective, and tried, in the 
eighties, with success but without much beauty, to 
carry them over into Japanese art. In addition, he 
introduced shadows into some of his compositions — 
a device alien to the whole spirit of Chinese and 
Japanese painting. He was the first Japanese artist 




172 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

to attempt copper-plate engraving. Queer renderings 
of European scenes by him remain to us. In a hun- 
dred different spheres of art, invention, and speculation 
he tried his hand. His intellectual curiosity in every 
field reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci. He remains 
one of the most interesting and puzzling figures of his 
time — an adventurer, a restless experimenter, a forger 
and a man of extraordinary though chaotic genius. 

A poem written when he was dying has a curious 
vibrancy : " Kokan now dies, for he is very old ; to 
the passing world he leaves a picture of the world 
that passes." 

KOMAI YOSHINOBU did work in the style of 
Harunobu during the seventies. He furnishes 
another example of the obscurity that covers so 
much of Japanese print history ; for it is not known 
whether he was an independent artist., or identical 
with Yamamoto Yoshinobu, who produced two-colour 
prints in the fifties, or worse yet, an early signature 
of Koriusai. The first theory is the most probable. 
His work is rare, beautiful in 
colour, and well worthy of further 
^* research. 

jff^ Masunobu, the second of that 

^ name, whose work, in clear, deli- 

cate colour and charming arrange- 
ment, generally follows Harunobu's 
closely, is also not definitely 

located. He appears to have been 
MASUNOBU. . . ,, ., /. ^, . 

ongmally a pupil of Shigenobu 

and Shigenaga. Most writers erroneously regard him 

as the same man who, under the name of Sanseido 




SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 173 

Tanaka Masunobu, produced two-colour prints in the 
forties, and hand coloured prints still earlier. 

One of the Second Masunobu's pillar-prints, repre- 
senting a girl with an open umbrella jumping from 
a balcony to meet a waiting lover, has a unique and 
most charming individuality of poise and colouring. 
His pillar-prints, of which about ten are known, are 
particularly fine. 

UjiMASA, Kamegaki Horiu, Muranobu, Tachi- 
BANA MiNKO, Banto, Chiryu, Ryushi, Kisen, and 
SuiYO are rare men who worked contemporaneously 
with Harunobu. The Hayashi Catalogue also names 
Shoha, Soan, Sogiku, Kogan and Seiko. 

KUNINOBU is an artist of extreme rarity, whose 
few surviving prints show distinction of line, based 
on the Harunobu manner. His work, done about 
1775, stands out from the work of Harunobu's horde 
of followers ; he was evidently a noteworthy artist, 
of whom one wishes we knew more. 

FujiNOBU worked in the manner of Harunobu in 
the early seventies. His output was small, and 
little of his work survives. It may be that he was 
the same individual as Yamamoto Fujinobu, who 
has already been mentioned as Shigenaga's pupil. 

KOMATSUKEN is a name signed to certain calendar- 
prints for the year 1765. The style is greatly like 
Harunobu's. His name may also be read Shoshoken. 
Mr. Gookin thinks him to be identical with Fusanobu, 
who has been previously mentioned. 

Harutsugu and SUSUKI Haruji, said by some 
to be the same person, produced a few pleasing 
prints about 1770. 



174 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Shunsho. 

Portrait of an Actor in Tragic R8le. 

His soul is a sword ; 
His sword with the spirit's breath 
Is bathed of its terrible lord, 
In whose eyes is death. 

And the massive control, 
And the lighted implacable eye 
Leash a fierce and exalted soul 
Of dark destiny. 



With the strength of the hills— 
Kiso's iron mountains of snow — 
He waits : time brings and fulfills 
The hour for the blow. 

He waits ; and the white 
Full robes round his shoulders sway, 
With woof of pale orange alight, 
Pale green, pale grey. 

Like a falcon, flown 
To bleak mid-regions of sky. 
He poises. One image alone 
Holds his sinister eye — 

A vision, a prey 
Towards which he shall soon be hurled- 
And his fury shall darken the day, 
And his joy, the world. 



A music enfolds him 
Like the thunders that are poured 
Across heaven ; it holds him 
With the song of the sword. 

It enthrals, it inspires. 
And its zenith shall be 
Lightning of unleashed desires 
Crashing along the sea. 









SHUXSHO: AX ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN 
TRAGIC ROLE. 

Size 12 X 6. Signed S/n/;;s//o ^^(7. 



175 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 177 



Those actor-types which Harunobu and his school 
so scornfully cast aside became the chosen speciality 
of the greatest of his rivals and contemporaries, 
Katsukawa Shunsho. As one examines sheet after 
sheet of Shunsho's theatrical prints, Harunobu's 
contemptuous words concerning " this vulgar herd," 
the actors, lose their significance ; for here pass in 
gorgeous procession a series of lofty, intense, and 
unforgettable figures charged with 
the quintessence of heroic force. 

The designer of these prints was 
born in 1726 and died about 1792 
— some authorities say 1790. His 
period of greatest activity covered 
the years 1765 to 1780, thus in- 
cluding the working periods of 
both Harunobu and Koriusai, and 
ending as Koriusai's did when in 
the eighties Kiyonaga's star rose 
blindingly. He lived for a while 
at the house of his publisher, 
Hayashi ; sometimes in his early 
work he used in place of a signa- 
ture a seal shaped like a small 
covered jar with handles, on which Hayashi's name 
is inscribed. The legend is that he was too poor 
to own a seal in the early days of his struggle and 
so borrowed that of his landlord ! 

Shunsho had no antecedent teachers among the 
print-designers. He sprang instead from a school 
of painters who did not design for prints. These, 
headed by Choshun and his son Katsukawa Shunsui, 




KATSUKAWA 
SHUNSHO. 



178 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

had since 1700 been producing rich paintings of 
women in elaborate drapery. The Buckingham 
Collection contains one print by Shunsui, but it is 
an almost unique rarity. Shunsho, by a curious 
shift in the stream of art history, not only took up 
prints, but even took up the department of prints 
least in line with the tendencies of his own school, 
the department of actor-representation, which was 
the speciality of Kiyomitsu and the old Torii 
School, and which Harunobu's popular innovations 
had almost driven out of fashion. To this work 
Shunsho brought the new technique of Harunobu 
and great native individuality ; and with the fresh 
armament of full colour he defended magnificently 
the threatened stronghold of actor-prints. His popu- 
larity became enormous. He grew quickly to the 
stature of one of the great and far-reaching powers 
in Ukioye history. Side by side with Harunobu, he 
in his separate field executed year by year actor- 
portraits which by their vigour of line and brilliancy 
of colour-combination take a place as high as that 
held by the works of his rival. 

No contrast could be more striking than that 
between them. The one is all grace, the other all 
force ; the one loves to linger in quiet gardens, the 
other drags us up to the icy heights of tragic crisis. 
Shunsho's sense of dramatic composition was keen ; 
and, as we see in Plate 19, his ferocious actor- faces 
peer out with a vivid menace, his tense actor-limbs 
shake with a concentrated and imprisoned fury not 
the less impressive because of its intentional exag- 
geration. They have not Harunobu's unreality of 



m." ' ^ ■^^y^mm^^::^&^^:^i^^ '^-^^^^ 




SHUNSHO : THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A 
WOMAN IX WHITE. 

Size II X 5|. Unsigned. 



179 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 181 

perfect grace, but the utterly different super-reality 
of magnified passion. In repose they are like 
statues ; in action they have the vigour of those 
natural forces — waves, river currents, storms of 
thunder — which, as in the Shunsho print reproduced 
on the cover of this volume, so often form their 
backgrounds. 

Shunsho's figures of women — or rather his figures 
of men acting the parts of women, according to the 
invariable custom of the Japanese stage at this time 
— are less violent, but often as tense. Two of these 
appear in Plates 20 and 21. In long sweeping robes 
of brilliant dye they move with the step of a Cly- 
temnestra, or poise in strange attitudes of arrested 
motion not unworthy of an Antigone. All his 
figures are dynamic — the storehouses of volcanic 
forces whose existence he suggests by restless 
line-conflicts. 

Shunsho's predecessors in actor representation had 
never equalled the intensity of these figures and faces. 
Shunsho tears the heart out of a role and holds it up 
for us to see. He gives the passion of the actor such 
expression as would have been impossible to Kiyo- 
nobu, twisting the face into a distorted and grandiose 
mask beside which the faces of the Primitives seem 
wooden and meaningless. 

The spectator whose aesthetic sense embraces only 
a love of tranquillity will find no beauty in these dis- 
turbing faces and forms — unless perhaps the beauty 
of pure colour is enough to beguile him. It may 
well do this ; few things have power to bring a richer 
sense of aesthetic satisfaction than a succession of 



182 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

fine Shunshos, in each one of which a new colour- 
arrangement unfolds new harmonies. 

Shunsho's work includes a very great number of 
actor-prints in the narrow upright hoso-ye form and 
a few large square prints. He also issued a series of 
small illustrations for the " Ise Monogatari," an old 
romantic chronicle which furnished many favourite 
subjects to the artists. These are quiet in design 
and soft in colour ; to them the eye may turn for 
rest if wearied by the straining actors. In collabora- 
tion with Shigemasa he produced a set of ten small 
prints representing sericulture, which have consider- 
able charm. In 1776 the same pair of artists brought 
out a series of book-illustrations called "Mirror of 
the Beauties of the Green Houses," representing 
groups of courtesans occupied with the various 
activities of daily life — in the street, the house, the 
garden, and the temple. This book has been called 
the most beautiful ever produced in Japan ; when 
one examines its chief rival, " The Mirror of the 
Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara," by Kitao 
Masanobu, one need have no hesitancy in giving 
Shunsho's and Shigemasa's the first place. This 
means, very probably, the first place among the 
illustrated books of the world. Its pages, printed 
in rose, purple, brown, yellow, and grey, are rich 
and delicate. Sheets from all these books are often 
found mounted as separate prints. Shunsho's few 
known pillar-prints are generally magnificent. 

Because of his enormous productiveness, Shunsho's 
work in hoso-ye form is common, frequently in fine 
condition. Most of the hoso-ye prints were originally 




SHUXSHO : THE ACTOR NAKAMURA XOSHIO IN 

FEMALE ROLE. 

Size I2| X 6. Signed Shinisho ga. Gookin Collection. 

F/a/e 21. 

183 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 185 

issued in joined groups of three ; the groups are 
seldom found intact now. The grace of his women 
has made them more generally popular than his im- 
pressive men, and they are consequently harder to 
obtain. It must be noted that Shunsho's work is 
uneven, and that the majority of the pieces offered 
are either tame and uninteresting examples of pot- 
boiling or caricatures that lack the intensity which 
lifts certain of the artist's most grotesque figures to 
tragic heights. The matchless Shunsho collection 
of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin is full of such prints as 
rarely come into the market to-day. Occasionally 
the more distinguished ones are met with ; and they 
are treasures which the practised collector eagerly 
seizes. Fortunately print dealers are not, as a rule, 
conscious of the greatness of the difference, and 
they will frequently offer side by side a print that 
is merely one of Shunsho's commonest pieces of 
hack-work and a print that is one of the glories 
of the Ukioye School. On such occasions the 
collector has the pleasure of profiting by his own 
discrimination. 

Shunsho's large square prints and pillar- prints are 
of extreme rarity. 

BUNCHO. 
Connected by association with the school of 
Shunsho, yet lifted by his originality to a place 
quite apart from it, is the artist Ippitsusai Buncho. 
His master, a certain Ishikawa Kogen (or Yuki- 
moto) of the classical Kano School, seems to have 
meant little to him ; from the beginning of his pro- 



186 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



duction, about 1765, Shunsho's and Harunobu's 
influence chiefly guided him. He and Shunsho 
jointly published in 1770 three volumes of actor- 
portraits enclosed in fans. Little is known of his 
life except that he was originally a Samurai ; he is 
said to have turned from his original master to the 
Ukioye School and to have led 
a life of dissipation until eventu- 
ally his friends persuaded him to 
abandon such things and procured 
for him the honorary title of 
Hokyo. After this, we hear 
nothing of him. He died in 1796. 
Buncho's work attracts the ob- 
server with a charm different from 
that of any other Ukioye artist. 
A curious mannerism in his way 
-^ of drawing faces and a fascinating 

^^^^ perverse grace in the attitudes of 

his figures mark his prints. Prac- 
tically all his work is in the /wso- 
ye form. His subjects are chiefly 
young male actors in the roles 
of women. Harunobu's influence, 
manifest in Plate 22, brought him 
grace but not sweetness. There is an astringent 
quality in his work that prevents it from ever being 
serene. His figures, whose line-work is the apotheosis 
of suavity and studied refinement, are arched into 
slightly strained and tortured attitudes ; complex 
forces seem to dominate them like unseen winds ; 
consuming or delicate passions move obscurely 




IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO. 



i 






BUNCHO : COURTESAN AND HER ATTEXDAXT IN SNOW- 
STORM, 
Size 12 X 5j. Signed I ppitsiisai Bimclio ga. Mansfield Collection, 

Plate 22. 

187 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 189 

through their limbs and faces. Their heads poise 
at unnatural angles as if consciously turning their 
indifferent eyes from the spectacle of common things 
toward a secret and hypnotizing world of their own. 
These alien beings haunt one ; it seems as if they 
had some mystery to reveal, some disturbing wonder 
to communicate could one but make them speak. 

Part of Buncho's strangeness lies in the fact that 
he seeks for his figures not a human but an abstract 
and geometrical grace. His famous print, often 
reproduced, of the actor Segawa Kikunojo as a lady 
in white carrying an orange umbrella beneath a 
willow-tree, is a study in the harmonics of pure line ; 
to this end every other element of representation has 
been sacrificed. Line exists here not merely to 
bound a form but for its own inherent beauty. 
Buncho is the greatest of all masters of the geometry 
of lines and spaces ; these have, as he arranges them, 
the inevitability and clarity of a mathematical de- 
monstration. 

His use of colour is equally notable and strange. 
By employing tints that are almost discords he 
produces arresting and fascinating effects. His 
combinations of orange and slaty grey, or dull 
red and slaty blue and pale yellow, or pink and 
purple, have an uncanny vibrancy that makes them 
stand out in one's memory. 

Buncho's strangeness has a further aspect. There 
is in him an intangible spiritual abnormality. I am 
led to localize this in his portraits of the actor Segawa 
Kikunojo, and to imagine a curious relation between 
the two. Some of his portraits of this actor are the 



190 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

flower of his work. In them appears a passionately 
rarefied beauty ; they have an unusual pitch, like the 
overstrained vibration of violin strings stirred by 
some heavy blow. Segawa Kikunojo was the fore- 
most woman-impersonator of his time. His grace in 
such roles is attested by prints from the hands of 
many artists ; but none rise to the unearthly beauty 
of Buncho's. Even if we knew nothing of the life of 
the Japanese stage at this time, or of the custom of 
actors like Segawa Kikunojo to dress and live like 
women when off the stage, we might still be put on 
inquiry by the peculiar ethereal quality of some of 
these portraits. For art whose initial impulse lies 
in morbid regions often flies into regions of the most 
disembodied spirituality for expression. Flowers of 
the morass frequently have a pale delicacy that is 
alien to the flowers of the field. 

It is, however, with a confession of fancifulness 
that I reconstruct the following story to account for 
Buncho. He, a Samurai, was driven by keen artistic 
sensibility to the study of painting under a classical 
master. From this studio he was lured by the glitter 
and glamour of Ukioye into the world of prints and 
actors, and sank into a slough of dissipation above 
which gleamed the balefully beautiful star of Segawa 
Kikunojo. Haunted by a perverse susceptibility, 
his tense-strung nerves vibrated at that morbid 
touch into notes of such disembodied sweetness as 
the world has scarcely known elsewhere ; and at last 
he passed into retirement and death, still the puppet 
of a disturbing illusion. He was an unbalanced 
temperament, a dreamer of keen and attenuated 




SHUNYEI : AN ACTOR. 

Grey background. Size 14 x 9|. Signed Shunyei ^a. 



4 



Fla^e 23. 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 193 

beauty that has nothing in common with the normal 
wholesome life of earth. 

His prints are exceedingly rare ; many a good col- 
lection possesses not a single fine specimen of his 
work. I had never seen or heard of a pillar-print by 
him until very recently ; but lately an interesting one 
has been found in Japan. 

Shunyei. 
Shunsho's vigorous style had many followers, 
among whom Shunyei is commonly regarded as the 
most important. He was born in 
1767, and lived until 18 19. His 
teacher Shunsho's manner domi- 
nated his work from his earliest 
years, though some late sheets 
exist in which he followed Ki- 
yonaga. It is believed that origin- 
ally he used the name Shunjo ; 
fine work is extant with that 
signature. He had many pupils, 
and was himself an able painter; 
but his ordinary work is largely derivative. At times, 
however, his hoso-ye actor-prints achieve an effect of 
great power by the use of large masses of colour. 
He had a certain sharpness of observation — a 
certain knack of catching in his portraits the 
peculiarities of his models, that produces an effect 
less dignified but more vivid than Shunsho's. A 
sense of humour glimmers through his rendering 
of some of these keenly drawn and intimately 
characterized actor-faces. Unmistakable as may be 
10 




194 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

the features of a Danjuro or a Hanshiro drawn 
by Shunsho, one nevertheless feels that the per- 
sonality of the actor has been largely dominated 
by Shunsho's supreme interest in the passion or 
terror of the role ; and though he pictured the face 
of the actor, the spirit which he sought was 
wholly the spirit of the part. Shunyei, on the 
other hand, often managed to retain the idiosyn- 
crasies of the sitter and his peculiar spiritual 
flavour ; and though his works are not often as 
beautiful as Shunsho's, they are frequently more 
human. On the whole, we may say that Shun- 
sho created generalized types, Shunyei reproduced 
observed individuals. 

Shunyei produced, besides the actors in hoso-ye 
form by which he is best known, a few large 
heads and full-length portraits of actors marked 
by a strength of drawing and a breadth of cha- 
racterization different from his usual work. One 
of these is reproduced in Plate 23. On a grey 
background, this powerfully designed figure stands 
out with gigantic simplicity in masses of dull 
colour. The prints of this rare type are perhaps 
Shunyei's best. Beside them must rank the large 
actor-heads, interesting to the collector because of 
their relation to the work of another great artist, 
Sharaku. It is still uncertain whether Sharaku 
or Shunyei was the inventor of this type of 
large bust-portrait. Dr. Kurth assumes, for the 
greater glory of Sharaku, that he was the pre- 
cursor ; but the question cannot be regarded as 
settled. 




SHUXKO : THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MOXXOSUKE IX 
CHARACTER. 

Size 13 X 6. Unsigned, but stamped with Jar Seal. 

Plate 24. 

195 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 197 

Shunko. 

The equal of Shunyei among Shunsho's other 
pupils is to be found in Katsukawa Shunko. He 
was the spiritual image of his master, except that 
he had not his master's full command of terror. His 
figures, as in Plate 24, poise or sway with gentler 
emotions ; as a rule, they are agreeable rather than 
impressive. One comes to recognize him frequently 
by the peculiar suavity of his designs. It is true 
that he sometimes approaches very near to Shunsho's 
power ; but this is less charac- 
teristic and less interesting than 
his quieter manner. It is un- 
necessary to treat of him at 
great length, for most of his work 
is of a type whose main qualities 
have been treated fully under 
Shunsho. It is not known when 
Shunko was born ; he died in 
1827. 

It may be noted that he some- shunko. 

times sealed his prints instead of signing them, using 
a jar-shaped seal much like that which Shunsho had 
made famous. 

In the Spaulding Collection, Boston, is a re- 
markable full-size triptych by Shunko, representing 
a party of actors picnicking in the country. 
The style shows it to be greatly influenced by 
Kiyonaga ; and the whole composition of this 
beautiful piece is different from most of Shunsho's 
work. 




198 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Other Followers of Shunsho and his 
School. 

Shunri was another pupil of Shunsho; he appears 
to have been a competent designer, but no great figure. 
Shuntoku, Shunki, Shunkaku, Shoyu, Shunyen, 
Shunken, and Shunkyoku may be described in 
the same words. Each has perhaps produced a few 
beautiful works, but their originality is not marked. 

Rantokusai Shundo, a gifted pupil of Shunsho, 
has left work so rare that one cannot make any very 
definite statement about him. His few known prints 
are admirable. One suspects that this signature is 
merely the early name of some well-known artist. 

Shunsei, Shunrin, Sobai, and Shunkio are 
later artists ; their importance is small. 

Shuntei, "owing partly to illness and partly to 
systematic indulgence in drink" (Strange), and 
partly to complete lack of natural distinction, pro- 
duced nothing of interest ; and his coarse battle- 
scenes may be classed with the crude work char- 
acteristic of a later period. He worked chiefly 
between 1800 and 1820. 

KiNCHO Sekiga is said to have been a pupil of 
Buncho. 

Shunko II was a pupil of Shunyei. His name is 
written in different characters from that of the first 
Shunko. Kichosai Shunko also produced actor- 
prints. 

Yumisho was a very rare pupil who adopted 
Kiyonaga's style in line-work. The same may be 
said of Yenshi, some of whose work is very beautiful ; 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 199 

he appears to have come much under the influence 
of Yeishi. Several ot his triptychs are fine. 



TOYOHARU. 

Utagawa Toyoharu is a strangely equivocal figure 
in print history ; his fame is great, but no surviving 
print of his, so far as I have been 
able to ascertain, is of a quality 
to justify fully his reputation. 
Born in 1733, he studied with 
Shigenaga and probably with 
Toyonobu, produced a limited 
number of prints in the sixties 
and seventies, withdrew from prints 
to painting when Kiyonaga's new 
style grew to splendour, and died 
in 1 8 14. He is said to have been 
a sensitive and delicately strung 
individual who shrank from com- 
petition and worked obscurely. 
His best-known work is a series 
of twelve designs for the various 
months done in collaboration with 
Shunsho and Shigemasa ; each 
print is divided diagonally into 
two scenes — a device of unfortunate and ingenious 
ugliness. The figures, however, have a certain 
delicate grace. His pillar-prints, which are rare, 
have considerable beauty. 

Toyoharu has been called a greater artist than 
Shunsho. It may be true, yet I am inclined to 
regard this view either as the result of his painting 




UTAGAWA 
TOYOHARU. 



200 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

and not his print-designing, or as part of a great 
Toyoharu myth, for which the later success of his 
pupils is responsible Certain it is that of his sur- 
viving prints few are noteworthy, and that he was 
greater as a painter and teacher than as a print- 
designer. We shall remember him more as the 
instructor of Toyokuni and Toyohiro and as the 
precursor of Hiroshige than for any of his own 
prints that remain to us. 

As a figure-painter, he is known as the founder of 
the Utagawa School. As a landscape-painter, he 
made successful use of European perspective, which 
he probably learned from Dutch engravings, and 
was perhaps the first Ukioye print-artist to return to 
the habit of the older schools and treat landscape 
not as a mere setting but as a thing by itself. His 
scenes are too stiff and too crowded with petty 
details to lay any real claim to beauty. He used 
as the dominant note in many of them the orange 
colour so dear to Koriusai ; but no pigment can well 
be imagined that is less fitted for landscape-render- 
ing. Yet the historical importance of these prints 
is great ; for they are, so to speak, the grandparents 
of the marvellous landscapes of Hiroshige. 

Utagawa Toyonobu is believed by some authori- 
ties to have been merely Toyoharu's early name ; 
others think him identical with Ishikawa Toyonobu ; 
and still others regard him as an independent artist 
who was a pupil of Ishikawa Toyonobu, his greater 
namesake. The few prints we have by him — I know 
of less than half a dozen — are not sufficient to enable 
one to form an opinion as to this. 



SECOND PEEIOD: POLYCHROME 201 



TOYOMARU and TOYOHISA were among Toyoharu's 
pupils. 

Shigemasa. 

Kitao Shigemasa may be called the great chame- 
leon of the Ukioye School : a discriminating 
chameleon, who chose only the greatest artists of 
each decade from whom to take his changing hue. 
As M. Raymond Koechlin expresses it, "it was his 
destiny to reflect in his art the 
art of the most original of his 
contemporaries." Born about 1740, 
he lived until 18 19. His teacher 
was Shigenaga ; this master died 
not long after Shigemasa com- 
menced work with him. Thus 
Shigemasa began painting early 
enough to be influenced by the 
last of the Primitives ; and his 
first prints, dating from about 
1764, are graceful three-colour 
renderings of actor-themes in the 
manner of Kiyomitsu, and more 
brutal ones in the manner of Kiyo- 
masu. With the rise of Harunobu and the perfection 
of polychrome printing, Shigemasa turned to that 
style ; later he followed Koriusai, in whose manner he 
produced some wonderfully beautiful large sheets of 
women and some fine pillar-prints. Still later he fol- 
lowed the style of Shunsho. Together with this artist 
he produced in 1786 a set of ten small sheets repre- 
senting the various stages of sericulture, in which he 
surpasses his collaborator. The same two artists had 




KITAO SHIGEMASA. 



202 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

earlier collaborated, in 1776, to produce the famous 
illustrated book " Mirror of the Beauties of the 
Green Houses." These illustrations are not signed ; 
but comparing them with Shigemasa's portion of the 
sericulture series, which are signed separately by the 
two artists, we may well believe that a large part of 
the peculiar grace of the " Green Houses " is 
Shigemasa's and not Shunsho's contribution. With 
Shunsho and Toyoharu, he collaborated in a series of 
designs for the twelve months, of which I have 
already spoken under Toyoharu. Like so many 
other artists of this period, Shigemasa gradually 
withdrew from work in the eighties before the blaze 
of Kiyonaga's glory. Kiyonaga himself was perhaps 
influenced by the older artist. 

Shigemasa's draughtsmanship is the one quality 
that marks him through all his changes ; from first to 
last, it is superb. With a fine firmness and ease he 
produces, as in Plate 18, designs in which restraint 
combines with great expressiveness. His faces have 
repose and distinction ; his draperies are drawn with 
notable simplicity and dignity ; his cool and quiet 
colour is admirable. Through all his styles runs a 
fastidious delicacy of feeling, and what Fenollosa 
terms " an even mastery." He never attempted the 
impossible or strained towards the unattainable ; all 
his work has the stamp of a calmly working, reserved, 
confident artist. The deliberate, flawless craftsman- 
ship of his works places him beside the greatest. 

Considering the length of his career, he produced 
surprisingly little work ; important prints by him are 
now rarer than those of any other artist of this 



SECOND PERIOD: POLYCHROME 203 

period. His pillar-prints, which are particularly fine, 
have been for many years proverbially few. As a 
rule only his earlier prints are signed. His surimono 
are, however, generally signed with the brush-name 
Kosuisai. Sheets from his numerous books are often 
mounted as separate prints. Collectors differ in 
their opinions as to whether it is advisable thus to 
take to pieces the sheets of a bound volume, such 
as the " Green Houses." Any such act, in dealing 
with art treasures, should be approached only after 
careful consideration ; but it seems in this case a 
desirable method of preserving and exhibiting what 
are, after all, wholly separate pictures. 



THE THIRD 
PERIOD : 
KIYONAGA 
AND HIS 
FOLLOWERS 

FROM THE 

MATURITY OF KIYONAGA 

TO HIS RETIREMENT 

(1780-1790) 



CHAPTER V 

THE THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA AND HIS 
FOLLOWERS 

From the Maturity of Kiyonaga to his Retirement 
(1 780-1 790). 

With the fully developed and complex technique 
which had been brought to perfection by the time of 
Harunobu's death, the colour-print took on a new- 
richness of expression and reached its culmination in 
the Third Period. 

Generalizations attempting to define the difference 
between the work of this and the preceding periods 
are perilous ; but we shall perhaps not be venturing 
too dangerously if we summarize the change of 
attitude as a step toward naturalism combined with 
a deepening of ideal significance. 

In the period of the Primitives the artistic impulse 
was almost wholly one of decoration — an attempt to 
express in line and colour the great themes of design 
that stirred within the brain of the artist. The 
Primitives were inspired by what Von Seidlitz calls 
the desire of " presenting single characteristic 
motives of movement." Their creations had no 
relation to observed fact or to an exact rendering of 



208 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Nature ; they were the shadows of lofty dreams of 
form projected by the luminous spirit of the artist 
against the wall of space. 

The designs of the Second Period, though hardly 
more realistic than those of the First, were neverthe- 
less nearer life. The delights and passions of real 
men, even though fancifully regarded, coloured the 
conception of the artist as he approached his work ; 
so that we find in Harunobu the exquisite joys, in 
Shunsho the terrific revolts, and in Buncho the super- 
sensible longings of the heart. Yet it is all symbo- 
listic, all fictional, and nothing real is portrayed ; the 
sharply limited world of these prints is a world of 
imagination from which no paths of communication 
open to regions of everyday. The perception of 
these artists did not enter into and interpret the seen 
earth ; absorbed in the creation of a personal dream, 
it imposed its arbitrary categories upon objects from 
without, and had little respect for their intrinsic 
beauty. With magic incantations, the designer 
shattered the forms of the real world to bits and 
whimsically remoulded them nearer to the heart's 
desire. This attitude — a mixture of adolescence, 
playfulness, and vision — may be described by the 
phrase " nafvely imaginative." 

The decorative impulse of the Primitives and the 
naively imaginative impulse of the Early Polychrome 
masters changed in the Third Period to a different 
variety of inspiration — the naturalistic and interpre- 
tive. By naturalistic and interpretive, I mean the 
attempt to seize a number of detached elements of 
observed life and weave them into a design that 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 209 

reports not only the idiosyncrasies of the artist, but 
also some sense of the deep nature of the elements 
themselves. The artists of this period, while 
mastering the decorative impulse of the Primitives 
and the imaginative freedom of the Early Polychrome 
masters, found reality more interesting and more 
worthy of faithful attention than did their pre- 
decessors. Buncho flew off at a tangent to life on 
the wings of geometrical design, but Shuncho lingers 
observant among beautiful women in quiet gardens : 
Harunobu abandoned the real world for his har- 
monious dreams of colour, but Kiyonaga weaves into 
harmonies the perfect forms which his creative 
imagination evokes from the imperfect forms of 
actual men. 

The earlier artists had hinted at landscape back- 
grounds ; this period was the first to go farther and 
relate the landscape pictorially and spacially to the 
figures. The world of these designs is no longer the 
world of a lovely but private dream ; we seem to 
enter a region as wide and free as life itself, inhabited 
by groups of superb and gracious figures that are as 
unforgettable as the Greek gods. 

This period may be regarded as one of those few 
moments of equilibrium in the history of art when 
the spiritual dominance of the artist and the claims 
of real fact meet in a perfect balance. Toward one 
extreme lies fancifulness ; toward the other extreme, 
realism ; and in the centre, this narrow isle of quiet 
where the two forces join in harmony. Since man 
lives neither by bread alone nor by dreams alone, the 
moments when he reconciles the claims of his visions 



210 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

with the facts he must face are the high peaks in his 
history. Mind and matter, hope and experience, 
longing and limitation, for an instant combine in 
a reconciliation that interprets and ennobles his 
environment. This is art's maturity, its fine and 
perfect flower. 

All these things are implicit in the prints of 
Kiyonaga prime. He who can take pleasure in the 
Hermes of Praxiteles or the Fete Champetre of 
Giorgione will not find the meaning of Kiyonaga's 
noble figures hard to read. 

In examining the work of Kiyonaga and his con- 
temporaries, it will be impossible to ignore the fact 
that during this and the succeeding period the fore- 
most artists found the chief themes for their designs 
among the Oiran, or courtesans of the Yoshiwara. 
Nor can we omit some consideration of the curious 
position of these women. Such an inquiry has not 
the unpleasant features that a similar inquiry would 
have were the scene Europe. In the Japan of the 
late eighteenth century the typical Oiran was no 
creature of the mire, but a cultivated and splendid 
figure whose mental charm was as great as her 
physical attractiveness. The poet and the painter, 
the student and the young aristocrat, found in her no 
unworthy companion ; and as she strides glowing 
through the designs of Kiyonaga or Shuncho she 
seems rather a beloved of the gods than a mistress 
of men. 

The Yoshiwara or licensed quarter of Yedo was 
established in 1614 as part of the general Tokugawa 
regime of orderliness and control : even by that date 




4 

A 



kiyonaga: the courtesan hana-oji with attendants. 

One of a Series "Designs of Spring Greenery." Size 15 x 10. Signed Kiyonaga ^ 
I^late 25. 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 213 

the authorities had tired of the cruel and ugly chaos 
that prevails in these matters to-day in our cities. 
The name of the quarter was derived from the fact 
that it was located in the midst of an ancient 
"yoshiwara" or rush-moor. In 1657, after a fire 
that demolished all the buildings, the quarter was 
moved to a site half a mile north of the great 
Asakusa temple in the north-east outskirts of the 
city, where it remains to this day. Within this 
moated and walled enclosure about a quarter of a 
mile square, to which access was obtained through 
one great gate, stood orderly rows of large houses 
crowded close together. The front of each house 
was latticed ; behind the bars appeared the splendidly 
clad inmates. These were of many grades and ranks; 
it is, as a rule, the highest class only that are rep- 
resented in the prints. 

The high-class Oiran was a notable personage. 
Her state was like that of a princess. Attendant 
upon her were customarily two small girls, called 
Kamuro, who acted as lady's-maids ; and one or two 
older girls, called Shinzo, whose duties were those of 
a kind of maid-of-honour. Her attire, of a gorgeous- 
ness wholly different from the costume of the ordinary 
woman, bedecks her in many of the prints with truly 
royal splendour. Poets sang of her ; artists painted 
her ; the common people talked of her with the same 
frank and adm.iring interest that our populace bestows 
upon theatrical favourites. Moralless though her 
life was, it was not in any external sense degraded ; 
she stood in the position in which have stood all the 
great courtesans of history. 
11 



214 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

The names of the more famous among the Oiran 
have come down to us wrapped in glowing tradition. 
Hana-ogi of the House of Ogi-ya, the most beautiful 
and deeply loved courtesan of her time, moves im- 
mortal through the designs of Kiyonaga, Shuncho, 
Yeishi, Utamaro, and their contemporaries. She was 
a pupil of the poet Toko Genrin, and ranked as a 
distinguished artist in both Chinese and Japanese 
verse. At one time, obeying the dictates of a pro- 
found attachment, she dared all perils and fled from 
the Yoshiwara with her lover. These facts, together 
with the filial piety for which she was renowned, 
doubtless augmented her romantic fame. Of her 
beauty and lordly carriage the prints leave us no 
doubt. Again and again we find lavished upon her 
well-beloved figure all the resources of the greatest 
artists. In Plate 25 she is the leading figure, with 
her attendants grouped around her ; in Plate 32 she 
stands beside a latticed window opening on to the 
Sumida River, alone and meditative. 

It is necessary for any one who would understand 
the art of the period to put aside preconceived 
notions and realize that these courtesan-portraits are 
not representations of low gutter creatures, but that 
they portray women of the highest degree of intel- 
lectual refinement who were in real life much like the 
cultivated hetaircs of ancient Athens, the companions, 
friends, and beloveds of Pericles and Plato. 

And as one examines the {Q,yN records which 
Japanese writers have given to the Western world, 
the conviction grows ever stronger that at this time, 
when the free and romantic love of men and women 




KIYONAGA : LADY WITH TWO ATTENDANTS. 

One of a Series " Brocades of the East." Size 15 x 10. Signed Kiyonaga g 
Gookin Collection. 



FlaU 26. 



215 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 217 

was a thing alien to the businesslike Japanese 
marriage system, the one region where love as we 
understand it might flourish — the one region where 
might arise those desperate attachments of heart for 
heart which we regard as heroic — was the isolated 
enclosure of the Yoshiwara. There no shrewd 
parents arranged the unwilling, blind match ; there 
the hampered spirits of that day found freedom, how- 
ever perilous ; and there alone men and women, 
though surrounded by an atmosphere of sordid 
corruption, faced death as did the Tristram and 
Iseult of our legends, in the service of a passion more 
precious than life itself . . . For the Oiran could 
turn lover. 

KIYONAGA. 

Festival Scene. 

What gods are these, reborn from gracious days 
To fill our gardens with diviner mould 
Than therein dwelling ? What bright race of old 
Revisits here one hour our mortal ways ? 
Serene, dispassionate, with lordly gaze 
They move through this clear afternoon of gold. 
Equal to life and all its deeps may hold, 
Calm, spacious masters of the glimmering maze. 

What gods are these? or godlike men? whom earth 
Suffices, in a wisdom just and high 
That not repines the boundaries of its birth 
But fills its destined measure utterly — 
Finding in mortal sweetness perfect worth, 
Not yet grown homesick for the wastes of sky. 

The reader will perhaps have noted how many 
artists of the preceding period withdrew toward the 
close of their careers from the field to which a new 
conqueror had come. This universal victor was 



218 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



Kiyonaga. No other Ukioye artist ever so domi- 
nated his period. All earlier print-designers were 
gradually driven into retirement by his colossal 
success, and the majority of his contemporaries 
adopted his style. In him all previously developed 
resources met ; after him began that long decline 
which led through intermediate stages of such haunt- 
ingly lovely decadence to the final death of the art. 
The Torii School now awoke from its quiescence, 
and for the second and final time 
assumed the dominance it had in 
the days of Kiyonobu. 

Little is known of Kiyonaga's 
life. Born in 1742, he worked as 
a young man for a bookseller in 
Yedo. He studied painting under 
Kiyomitsu, became the fourth head 
of the Torii School, produced the 
most important portion of his work 
between i j'j'j and 1 790, and not long 
after 1790 retired from any large 
amount of further print-designing. 
His death occurred in 181 5. 
Though Kiyonaga was a pupil of Kiyomitsu, little 
of that artist's influence is visible in his work. It is 
true that his earliest sheets, actors in hoso-ye form, 
are precisely like Kiyomitsu's ; but he appears to 
have abandoned this style very quickly, and most 
of his early actor-prints resemble Shunsho's more 
than his master's. In certain of his early works 
Harunobu's influence is evident ; and the long-dead 
Moronobu's manner of line-work sometimes appears. 




KIYONAGA. 




KIYONAGA : THE COURTESAN SHIZUKA WITH ATTENDANTS IN THE 
PEONY GARDEN AT ASAKUSA. 

Left-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 x 10. Signed Kiyonaga §0. 



J'/a^e 27. 



219 



THIED PERIOD: KIYONAGA 221 

From Masanobu he perhaps inherited the grand 
carriage of his women. Later, Shigemasa's style 
influenced him, and Koriusai had a marked effect 
upon his development. He absorbed inspiration from 
all these artists, gathering to himself the best in the 
heritage of the past, and then struck out with a bold- 
ness that is never bizarre, an originality that is never 
affected, into his own natural and masterful manner. 

By about 1777 he had developed his distinctive 
style. Its most obvious characteristic lies in the new 
quality of the figures he depicts. His types perhaps 
grew out of those of Koriusai ; but he combined with 
Koriusai's richness a monumental quality to find the 
equal of which we must go back to the Primitives. 
It is his union of the pre-Harunobu dignity with the 
Harunobu grace and colour, in a superb and easy 
synthesis of his own — a truly grand style — that has 
made him by common consent the foremost Ukioye 
artist. 

The type of figure which Kiyonaga created is 
expressive of a more stable equilibrium of spiritual 
forces than any seen before. It embodies a normality 
of attitude chara:teristic of the great culminating 
periods of art. The primitive artist expresses himself 
in figures whose mannerisms and constraint suggest 
the limitations of his technique ; the decadent artist, 
as we shall see later, pours his visions into figures of 
a slender langour and relaxation that parallel his 
own weariness and satiety ; but the artist of the 
prime draws large-limbed, wholesome, magnificently 
normal figures as the symbols of his magnificently 
normal mind. 



222 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

These figures of Kiyonaga's mature period are 
unforgettable creations. Tall and strong, moving 
with the unconscious and stately grace of superb 
animals, they carry the suggestion of a spiritual 
structure even more glorious than the structure of 
their bodies ; and one looks upon them with a senti- 
ment not unlike awe, as upon princesses of some 
land of the gods. Kiyonaga's perfect drawing, 
operating through a naturalistic yet highly imagina- 
tive convention, ennobles the forms he portrays as 
did the convention of the Greek sculptors ; and he 
comes nearer to the Greek sentiment toward the 
nude than does any other Japanese artist except 
Toyonobu. His nudes themselves are not what I 
now refer to, but rather to that sense of bodily 
presence, that consciousness of the limbs beneath the 
draperies, which, as in Plate 28, one finds recurrently 
in his pictures. He keeps his draperies simple, deny- 
ing himself the gorgeous brocades of birds and 
flowers which Koriusai used so richly. The gar- 
ments he draws are beautiful ; but he does not lose 
in their ornamentation the lines of the splendidly 
proportioned body beneath ; muscles contract and 
limbs move under the fine folds ; and our sense of 
the textiles is dominated by our sense of the 
organism within. 

The movements, gestures, and attitudes of these 
figures are tranquil and strong ; their forms are 
never melting or seductive, but always touched with 
a fine rigour. In one notable diptych, where a group 
of women and a seated man are gathered on the 
terrace of a tea-house overlooking the seashore. 




KIYONAGA : TWO WOMEN AND A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS BESIDE 
THE SUMIDA RIVER. 

One sheet of a triptych. Size 15 x 10. Signed Kiyonaga ga. Gookin Collection. 

I'la^e 28. 

223 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 225 

vigour of spiritual sanity and refinement of pictorial 
composition touch the highest point reached in the 
whole course of the art. The harmonies of this 
particular design, " The Terrace by the Sea," 
embody the best and most characteristic powers of 
Kiyonaga. 

We have never seen in bodily presence such people 
as Kiyonaga's. Yet, as Turner is reported to have 
said of his sunset, " don't you wish you had ? " 
These figures are serene, supernatural, Olympian ; 
fictional, just as Harunobu's are, but differing from 
his in that they interpret possible development and 
portray the human ideal, and do not lie apart from 
reality in a region of private vision. 

Kiyonaga saw, as the greatest artists of mature 
epochs have always seen, that the fictions of per- 
sonal fancy are not so interesting or so beautiful as 
imaginative renderings of reality. In so far as he 
respected reality he was a realist. Yet he was never 
the dupe of that realism which attempts to report 
photographically. In his renderings fact took a har- 
monious place alongside of those idealizations which 
were personal to him. Kiyonaga saw Nature with 
clear eyes, and on the solid foundation of observed 
fact he reared the noble structure of his vision of life 
— a vision in which the world is peopled by a race 
such as the human race ought to be. 

This was Kiyonaga's primary contribution to 
Ukioye art. Consequent upon it he introduced 
certain important innovations. 

We have seen how Harunobu, dreaming in colour 
and pushing to the farthest limits the refinements of 



226 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

technique in colour-printing, produced miniature 
jewelled improvisations that have never been equalled. 
Harunobu customarily elaborated every portion of 
his sheet with these inlayings of beautiful tones, 
enriching his figures with gauffrage and tinting his 
backgrounds of sky and water. He resembled a 
worker in enamels who must cover every inch of 
his surface with luminous hues. 

But just as Harunobu toward the end of his life 
felt these effects to be only partially adequate, and 
turned to the larger world of pillar-prints — so from 
the beginning Kiyonaga found this jewelled delicacy 
to be incompatible with the scope that was the need 
of his specific genius. He discarded all those lovely 
tricks of the engraver and the printer which had 
been almost an end in themselves to Harunobu. 
He abstained from giving to his backgrounds 
Harunobu's exquisite neutral tones, feeling that they 
could only sufifer by the addition of tint. He was no 
colour-dreamer, but a great harmonist of lines and 
spaces ; and the lofty skies and wide horizons that 
create distance behind his figures attest his wisdom. 

Similarly he was unable to content himself with 
the flawless grace of line that Harunobu and Buncho 
had mastered. Either from the powerful and massive 
brush-strokes of Moronobu or from the even more 
expressive brushwork of Shigemasa, he derived a 
style that is one of his chief glories. No use of line 
was ever more virile than his. The brush seems to 
vibrate in his hand ; the strokes are instinct with life 
along every fraction of their length ; the line narrows, 
widens, swirls, breaks, and flows in perfect response 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 229 

to the will of the mind behind it. So individual is 
Kiyonaga's touch that it would be possible for an 
expert to attribute to him a print of which only one 
square inch survived. 

It is characteristic of Kiyonaga's style that he did 
not confine himself to the small square sheets used 
by Harunobu and the small oblong hoso-ye used by 
Shunsho. His most important work is in the form 
of the large full-size sheets which he adopted from 
Koriusai. In these he rose to a height unparalleled 
in Ukioye ; and M. Koechlin is quite right in esteem- 
ing Kiyonaga's sense of elaborate composition, here 
so impressively displayed, as his chief grandeur. 

In the series of large sheets without backgrounds, 
" Designs of Spring Greenery," one of which is repro- 
duced in Plate 25 — Kiyonaga produced work not 
very different from that of his collaborator Koriusai. 
Only in certain sheets is there a harmonious grasp of 
the full possibilities of pictorial composition. But 
proceeding to other series, the gap widens. In the 
series " Present Day Beauties of the Yoshiwara," 
he advanced to his own unique field. Possibly he 
touched the supreme height in the great group 
" Brocades of the Customs of the East," which 
includes such well-known prints as the two salt- 
water carriers on the seashore, the three singers at 
the bath, the two ladies conversing with a flower- 
vendor, and the print reproduced in Plate 26. 

From these prints Kiyonaga proceeded to still 
further combinations, devising compositions in which 
two, three, or even five sheets unite into one wide 
design. For the triptych we have Kiyonaga to thank. 



230 CHATS ON JAPANESE FEINTS 

The triptych was not, it is true, literally Kiyonaga's 
invention ; many artists in the First and Second 
Periods had produced hoso-ye sheets in sets of three 
that could be joined together to form one picture. In 
fact, each set of three was originally one sheet printed 
from one set of blocks ; and it was convenience and 
economy rather than the idea of producing any real 
three-piece composition that led to the production of 
these sets. The prints were almost always conceived 
as separate pictures ; they seldom gain by juxtaposi- 
tion, and frequently suffer by it. 

Far other was the impulse that led Kiyonaga to 
his diptych and triptych compositions. The great 
triptych of the " Disembarkment," the diptych of 
the " Night Expedition," the " Serenade " triptych 
reproduced in Plate 29, and the whole series of 
diptychs called " Twelve Months of the South," to 
which belongs the marvellous " Terrace by the Sea," 
are all dominated by an indigenous rhythm of line 
and colour. These designs have not Shunsho's 
startling force, nor Harunobu's minutely detailed 
grace, nor Koriusai's richness ; all these elements 
Kiyonaga sacrifices for a broader sweep and a more 
unified pictorial quality. His designs co-ordinate 
the elements of line, colour, figures, and landscape 
into total impressions of such large harmony as we 
have not seen before and shall hardly see again. To 
over-estimate the genius that produced the grouping 
of his best work is impossible ; to realize it fully 
requires careful analysis, so unobtrusive and inevit- 
able are its effects. 

Kiyonaga's greatest works are these triptychs and 




N^^ 




KIYONAGA: GEISHA WITH 
SERVANT CARRYING 
LUTE-BOX. 

Size 27 X 4|. 
Signed Kiyonaga ga. 



KIYONAGA : WOMAN 
PAINTING HER 
EYEBROWS. 

Size 27 X 5. 
Signed Kiyonaga ga. 



J^late 30. 



231 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 233 

diptychs in which he depicts the holiday life of his 
Olympian figures. Even single sheets from them 
are treasures ; for though they combine into still 
greater compositions, each one, as we may see 
in Plate 27, or in any one of the sheets of 
Plate 29, is a perfect unit that can stand alone. 
His pillar-prints, of which two appear in Plate 30, 
are ranked among the foremost works in this form. 

Eventually Kiyonaga's finest manner passed. 
Though the vigour of his brush-strokes remained, 
his figures began to take on an exaggerated length 
and slimness characteristic of the coming decadence. 
Therefore his retirement from print-designing, a little 
after 1790, was not, as in the case of Harunobu's 
untimely death, an irreparable loss. His greatest 
work was finished. Why he retired is not known ; 
the various speculations on the subject are not very 
enlightening. 

Though the finest Kiyonaga prints rarely come 
into the market nowadays, the less important 
examples of his work are by no means impossible 
to obtain. His smaller prints, and his pillar-prints 
in particular, are among the most attractive acquisi- 
tions remaining for the collector. The large single 
sheets, if fine impressions and in fine condition, are 
among the foremost of the collector's treasures. The 
great triptychs are almost unprocurable, except in 
poor condition. 

The collector must patiently await his opportunity. 
There is probably not a single Kiyonaga obtainable 
anywhere to-day that is of the quality of that unique 
group of marvellously printed masterpieces which 



234 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

once belonged to FenoUosa, and which is now one of 
the glories of the Spaulding Collection in Boston. 
Similarly, the Mansfield Collection in New York 
and the Buckingham Collection in Chicago contain 
Kiyonagas which are the result of long years of 
search and which could not be duplicated in all 
the markets of the world combined. 

Pupils of Kivonaga. 

TORII KlYOMASA was the son of Kiyonaga. His 
work, produced between 1810 and 1825, is without 
special distinction. 

Among the minor pupils may be named Kiyotsugi, 
Kiyohisa, Kiyokatsu, Kiyotei, Kiyotoki, Kiyoyuki, 
Kiyohide II, Kiyotsune II. 

Every artist of the day was influenced by 
Kiyonaga ; among those difficult to classify other- 
wise may be named the following men : — 

Sancho, who worked in the neighbourhood of 
1780, produced prints somewhat in the manner of 
Shuncho. Delicacy rather than strength dis- 
tinguished him in the few examples of his work I 
have seen. 

Harumitsu is an artist whose work is known 
to me only by one pillar-print in my collection. 
Fenollosa, who once owned the print, noted on 
the margin of it : "A rare man. Name may be 
also read Shunko, but not the same as the pupil 
of Shunsho. A follower of Kiyonaga." And this 
is all the information I have been able to obtain 
about him. It is possible that he is the same as 
Shunko II. 







235 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 237 

Shuncho. 

Your lovely ladies shall not fade 
Though Yedo's moated walls be laid 
Level with dust, and night-owls brood 
Over the city's solitude. 
Far be the coming of that day ! 
Yet that it conies not, who shall say? 
Who knows how long the halls shall stand 
Of your once-golden wonderland? 
Perhaps shall Nikko crumble down, 
Its carvings worn, its glow turned brown 
Through many winters. On that hill 
Where great leyasu's brazen will 
In brazen tomb now takes its rest, 
Perhaps the eagle's young shall nest. 
Kyoto's gardens cannot last. 
At Kamakura, where the vast 
Form of the Buddha fronts the sea, 
A waste of waves may someday be. . . . 

Ah, stale and flat the warning bell 
Whose melancholy accents tell 
Impermanence to hearts that guess 
Time's undiscovered loveliness. 
A fairer Yedo shall arise ; 
A richer Nikko praise the skies ; 
leyasus mightier than of old 
Shall cast the world in wiser mould ; 
Fresh gardens shall be spread ; new faith 
Shall spring when Buddha is a wraith — 
And more puissant hands than yours 
Shall paint anew life's ancient lures. 
Yet when he comes who shall surpass 
Your beauty that so matchless was, 
A joy shall light him through your eyes, 
A flame shall from your embers rise, 
Your gentle art shall make him wise 
In mastery of melodies. 
And though your wreath in dust be laid, 
Your lovely ladies shall not fade ! 

Nothing is known of the life or personality 
of Katsukawa Shuncho, His name and certain 



238 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



peculiarities of his drawing indicate unmistakably 
that he began his career as a pupil of Shunsho ; but 
he soon fell under the influence of Kiyonaga and 
became that artist's most notable follower. His main 
work lies between the years 1775 ^.nd 1800; it is 
thought that he stopped designing prints before the 
latter year, though he is said to have lived until 
after 1821. His designs, one of which appears in 
Plate 31, comprise chiefly figures of women, drawn 
with extraordinary grace of line 
and softness of colouring. 

Except in a few early actor- 
j^ prints, Shuncho had only one 

VqV^ manner — that which we have come 

to call the middle Kiyonaga style. 
It was early in his career that he 
threw off the harsh dominance of 
Shunsho. M. Raymond Koechlin 
points out that had he remained 
under that influence he would 
without doubt have been lost 
in the banal horde of designers 
of actor-prints who spiritlessly followed that great 
artist. For there was nothing in common between 
the rugged masterful genius of Shunsho and the 
luminous grace of his pupil. Kiyonaga's style, 
however, Shuncho could adopt and utilize to express 
his own peculiar and mild sense of beauty, with a 
perfection that makes him stand out unique among 
Kiyonaga's disciples. Other pupils of Kiyonaga 
followed the master for a longer or shorter while ; 
but all the others sooner or later developed styles 




iv^^mn^im 



I // 




rf-r 




M^i 



^ "- 1-'/? uc. 




.: \\\ 









i 



■SHUNCHO : TWO LADIES 
UNDER UMBRELLA. 



Size 27 X 4|. 
Signed Shiincho ga. 



.Plate 32. 




i ^^^ 

SHUNCHO : THE COURTESAN 
HANA-5JI — THE SUMIDA 
RIVER SEEN THROUGH 
THE WINDOW. 

Size 27 X 5. 
Signed ShitncJio ga. 



239 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 241 

of their own or copied the styles of other leaders — 
often eccentric and decadent leaders, far inferior to 
him whom they had abandoned. But Shuncho, 
having adopted the Kiyonaga manner at its noblest, 
when the proportions in the drawing of the figure 
were most natural and dignified, never departed from 
it except to make it slightly less naturalistic, in 
accordance with what he had learned from his 
first master Shunsho. That this was so manifests 
Shuncho's purity of feeling, and also reveals his 
strange lack of desire to experiment in new manners. 
No artist so great as Shuncho has ever been so little 
endowed with initiative and invention. I fancy that 
he marks the point in the development of the 
Ukioye School where, after the progressive force of 
Kiyonaga had spent itself, the art stands still for a 
brief moment of perfect balance before it begins to 
take its course down the long slope of the decline. 
In many respects like Kiyonaga, Shuncho can 
hardly be regarded as second even to his master, 
except in originality. He lacked Kiyonaga's great 
creative imagination — an imagination which brought 
into being the Olympian style. But his gifts enabled 
him to assimilate this style perfectly and turn it to 
his own slightly different uses. His sense of compo- 
sition is rather undistinguished when compared with 
Kiyonaga's ; but the delicacy of his drawing, the 
restrained harmonies of his colour, and the clean 
vitality of his line have a beauty that we could ill 
afford to sacrifice even for Kiyonaga's strength. 
Kiyonaga brings down the gods in all their noble 
dignity to walk the earth in calm magnificence ; but 



242 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Shuncho leads us into a secret heaven where the 
loveliest and most flower-like of the gods have 
remained behind. His is a softer beauty, touched 
with remote half-lights, vibrant with faint wistfulness ; 
his superb women turn in mid-joy as though far and 
grave music had suddenly drifted to their hearing ; 
their perfection passes over into the region where 
beauty becomes sadness. No women in the whole 
range of Japanese art so haunt one's memory as do 
his ; no beauty seems at the same time so flawless 
and so charged with the burden of transitoriness. 
One cannot but feel that where Kiyonaga's healthy 
vision saw only the happiness and brilliance and 
splendour of the forms that swept by him in the 
mortal procession, Shuncho saw also the ghostly fleet- 
ness of their passing and the melancholy of their 
radiance sunset-bound ; and around his figures this 
sense throws a quiet tender light, a suggestion of 
brooding and caressing sweetness. 

In his finest prints the softly luminous colour and 
the gently sweeping lines of his ladies move some- 
times through the palely glowing rooms of palaces, 
but more often through sunlit fields and gardens and 
blossoming groves — regions of delight and cloud- 
less skies, scenes of eternal happiness. His colour- 
schemes in these natural settings are artfully con- 
trived to produce, through the limited agency of flat 
tints, an impression of crystal-clear atmosphere 
around and behind the figures. In both his triptychs 
and his pillar-prints there often stretches away this 
delicate world of hills or seashore or river-bank that 
plays no small part in the incantation of beauty. 








SHUXCHO : TWO LADIES 
IX A BOAT OX THE 
SUMIDA RIVER. 

Size 26 X 4*. Unsigned. 



YEISHO : TWO COURTESAXS 
AFTER THE BATH. 

Size 25 X 5. Signed Yeisho ga. 



Plate 33. 



243 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 245 

His pillar-prints, of which three are reproduced in 
Plates 32 and 33, are especially fine; I sometimes 
think that here he surpasses Kiyonaga. 

And yet there is about all his work a strange 
impersonality, an absence of any note that brings 
to our notice Shuncho himself, the observer and 
recorder. He is detached even from his own most 
perfect work. Compare him with Harunobu or 
Sharaku or Utamaro, and observe how invisible he is 
— how his designs have a transparency that absolutely 
conceals him. 

In historical importance and in originality Shuncho 
is secondary to Kiyonaga ; in absolute beauty his 
work deserves a place beside that of the master. 
As a colourist — his most distinguished role — he was 
perhaps the greater of the two. 

The collector may be interested to note that 
practically all Shuncho's work is printed with the 
utmost sharpness and refinement ; poor impressions 
of his prints are almost unknown. In this particular 
he is in striking contrast to many of his contempo- 
raries ; and one may perhaps trace his care to the 
training of Shunsho, of whose work also I have 
seldom seen a really poor impression. Shuncho's 
work is unfortunately not common ; finely preserved 
copies are scarcer than Kiyonaga's. 

Shunzan. 

Katsukawa Shunzan was a little-known artist who 

worked from about 1775 to about 18 10. He was 

first, as his name would suggest, a pupil of Shunsho ; 

in his rare early prints in hoso-ye form he produced 

12 



246 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



actors in the manner of that school with considerable 
charm of line, but without great vigour. Even in 
these early pieces Shunzan's lean- 
ing towards sweetness and suavity 
suggests that he was not at home 
j^ in the Shunsho manner ; and it is 

J^^ not strange to find that he later 

-^R^ turned to Kiyonaga, under whose 

powerful influence he produced his 
I best-known work — beautiful ladies 

^" ^ in robes of splendour. He generally 

copied the Kiyonaga type of figure 
closely, but a little stiffly ; and he 
sHUNZAN. was not often master of those 

harmonies of arrangement and 
grouping which distinguished his teacher. But occa- 
sionally his colour is very rich and glowing. 

Either he produced little or else time has been 
even less than normally kind to his work, for few 
prints by him survive. 

Shunman. 
Kubo Shunman was one of those singular artists 
who fascinate us almost as much by mystery as by 
beauty. Living from 1757 to 1820, or, as some 
authorities say, to 1829, he was at one time a pupil 
of Shigemasa ; but he later turned to Kiyonaga 
as his final and most important teacher. From 
Kiyonaga he learned the rudiments of his style ; 
yet on the whole his work resembles Kiyonaga 
very little. An individual touch dominates all his 
compositions. He may be called the symphonist 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 247 



of greys ; for a large part of his most notable produc- 
tion is done in modulated shades of this colour, 
heightened and made luminous here and there by 
carefully calculated touches of green, yellow, red, 
or violet. His figures are drawn in a manner less 
solid than Kiyonaga's ; as in Plate 45, the lines seem 
tormented and strained into arabesques of peculiar 
and restless beauty. The harmony 
of his colour is kept by this sharp 
intensity of line-work from sinking 
into mere sweetness and flatness. 

These figures of Shun man, 
sketched with the curious uneasi- 
ness of line of which I speak, 
stand before backgrounds of equal 
strangeness. The landscapes seem 
instinct with an obscure life ; the 
Talking Oak of Dodona was never 
more haunted than are they. His 
great six-sheet composition, " The 
Six Tamagawa," is positively dis- 
turbing in the feeling of super- 
natural forces that it awakens. As 
FenoUosa says : " Everything he 
does has a strange touch. The 
becomes distorted with a sort of 




KUBO SHUNMAN. 



Kiyonaga face 
divine frenzy ; 
trees grope about with their branch-tips like sentient 
beings ; flowers seem to exhale unknown perfumes, 
and the waters of his streams writhe and glide with 
a sort of reptilian fascination." Or, as Mr. Arthur 
Morrison puts it : " There is a touch of fantasy in 
most of his published designs, as well as in some 



248 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

of his original pictures — an atmosphere as of some 
strange country where the trees, the rocks, the flowers, 
and the streams are aHve with human senses and 
mysterious communion." 

For reasons not wholly clear, the work of Shunman 
is received by the Japanese connoisseurs with 
more favour than that of most Ukioye artists. 
Some obscure quality of restraint and imagination 
relates him to the older classical schools in a way 
that makes him acceptable to their aristocratic 
exclusiveness of taste. 

Shunman's best prints are so rare as to be beyond 
the dreams of the ordinary collector. His complete 
" Tamagawa " is a work for which all the great 
collectors in the world compete. His smaller prints 
and book-illustrations are, however, procurable ; and 
his surimono are excellent and fairly numerous. 
His pillar-prints, of which only three or four designs 
are known to me, are remarkably fine. 



KiTAO Masanobu. 

Two Women. 

What floors have ye trod ? What sky-paven places have opened 

their halls to your eyes? 
What light was yours, through summerward spaces watching the 

swallow that flies? 
What holy silence has touched your faces — what hush of paradise ? 

I think that he died of a longing unspoken who dreamed you 

to walk in our ways. 
The wheel at the cistern, the pitcher is broken : ye wot not that 

dust decays — 
Ye, torn from the heart of the dreamer as token to dreamers of 

other days. 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 



249 



Kitao Masanobu was another of the pupils of 
Shigemasa who marched eventually beneath the 
banner of Kiyonaga, though he retained to the last 
much of his first master's manner. Born in 1 761, he 
lived until 1 8 1 6. His occupations besides painting were 
various : he kept a tobacco-shop, and was best known 
in his own day under the literary name of Kyoden, 
for his highly popular novels and comic poems. He 
produced very few prints, but those 
few are of distinguished quality, 
all of them probably the product 
of his early years, before he reached 
the age of thirty. At least one of 
these, reproduced in Plate 31, is 
an unsurpassable triumph. His 
resemblance to his first master is 
so marked that it is not always 
possible at first glance to dis- 
tinguish his prints from those of 
Shigemasa. In fact there is a 
certain unsigned pillar-print, repre- 
senting the two lovers Komurasaki 
and Gompachi, which is still of 
doubtful authorship, some authorities attributing it 
to Shigemasa, while others assign it to Masanobu. 

Possibly Kitao Masanobu is most widely known 
for his elaborate illustrated book, " Celebrated Women 
of the Tea Houses and their Handwritings." This 
volume was published about 1780; I have already 
referred to it in dealing with the great illustrated 
book of Shunsho and Shigemasa. It consists of 
seven large double-page illustrations in many colours, 




250 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

and is a highly praised work, sheets of which are 
often mounted as separate prints. It appears to me, 
however, to have been overrated ; and my impression 
is that in these designs elaborateness has smothered 
composition and richness has obliterated beauty. 

Kitao Masanobu's single-sheet prints are lamentably 
few, as are also his pillar-prints ; but from those that 
remain to us it is possible to rank Masanobu as an 
artist second to only the very greatest. Spirituality 
is a clumsy word to use in describing work so 
definitely embodied as this ; yet none other conveys 
the sense of his peculiar and grave harmony. The 
mature beauty of his work carries us back to the 
perfection of Shigemasa. 

The collector will search long before he finds an 
important print by this artist to add to his collection. 

Masayoshi. 
Kitao Masayoshi, who frequently signed himself 
Keisai or Shosin, was a curious and original designer, 
who lived from 1761 to 1824. Though a pupil of 
Shigemasa, he appears to have drawn a large part 
of his inspiration from a source outside the Ukioye 
movement — the Kano School of painting, in which 
the classical traditions still flourished. In his main 
period, contemporaneous with Kiyonaga, his work 
was little influenced by the great master. His 
designs are marked chiefly by the vividness of his 
observation of flowers, animals, and landscape, and 
by his technical skill in recording them. His books 
of sketches are his best-known works — drawings 
in a manner new to wood-engraving ; he seldom 




251 



THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA 253 

employs any key-block, but leaves the main body 
of his colour in broad impressionistic sweeps of the 
brush without definite boundary. He approached 
Nature somewhat as did Hokusai in later days, with a 
sharp perception and infinite interest. His work lies 
aside from the main current of Ukioye history — an 
interesting backwater that comes more properly 
within the region of classical painting than within 
that of prints. 

Single-sheet prints by Masayoshi are very rare. 
His book-sheets are somewhat more frequently 
met with. 



VI 

THE FOURTH 

PERIOD: 

THE DECADENCE 

FROM THE 

RETIREMENT OF KIYONAGA 

TO THE 

DEATH OF UTAMARO 

(1790-1806) 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 

From the Retirement of Kiyonaga to the Death of 
Utamaro (1790-1806) 

The change that confronts us as we turn from the 
period of Kiyonaga to that of Utamaro, Yeishi, and 
Toyokuni is one whose significance is not at first 
sight wholly clear. We find the sound and classic 
figures of Kiyonaga gradually replaced by new and 
fascinating types — slender drooping bodies, wonder- 
fully piled coiffures, elaborately brocaded robes ; and 
the virile drawing of the earlier master gives way to 
the sinuous curves and arresting plasticity of the new 
designers. The favourite types of this time are 
almost as unreal as those of the Primitives, but they 
convey a totally different feeling; on the one hand, 
in their curious perverted way, they are far more 
realistic than the Primitives ever dreamed of being ; 
and on the other hand, they seem the products of 
minds weary of reality, who turn to the phantasies 
of the not wholly normal spirit for their ideals and 
their consolations. 

It must not be supposed, however, that the tran- 
sition to this style of the Decadence was a sudden 



258 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

one. The painters who had most perfectly assimi- 
lated the style of Kiyonaga were the very ones who, 
in this period, turned to the depiction of figures in 
which every line betrays the weariness of the hour 
and its craving for novelty. The apex of creative 
energy in this art had been reached and the inevitable 
decline was under way. 

Of the forces that produced this decline we have 
comparatively little knowledge. Fenollosa's account 
of the social conditions of the period throws some 
light upon the problem, " It was," he says, "a period 
of crisis in Tokugawa affairs. The cleavage between 
the aristocratic and the plebeian strata of Japanese 
life, which had become placidly conscious of itself in 
the days of Genroku, now threatened a moral, a 
social, if not a political disruption. The new factors 
of popular education — art, prints, illustrated books, 
the theatre, novels, contact with the Dutch at 
Nagasaki — all had stimulated the spirit of inquiry 
and of unrest which had penetrated back in investi- 
gation to the facts of the Shogun's usurpation ; 
which wrote new, popular histories of the national 
life ; which gave plays and novels a semi-political 
aim. This deeper wave of self-consciousness on the 
part of the people was met by the authorities 
with sterner repressions. The better elements that 
might have drifted into improving the popular 
standards in pleasure and art were driven out by 
a strict censorship. There was thus a sort of natural, 
or unnatural, selection which tended to isolate and 
give prominence to the coarser side of the popular 
feeling. If the issue were squarely made between 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 259 

Confucius and rank demoralization, there was little 
resource for the commoner but to choose the latter. 
Thus there arose a sort of alliance between the 
theatre and the houses of pleasure on the one hand, 
and the disaffected among the literary and political 
agitators upon the other. Men, great men who 
sowed the seeds of the revolution which ripened 
in 1868, had to flee for asylum, not to Buddhist 
temples, but to the labyrinths of the Yoshiwara, 
where, in the care of a romantic love lavished upon 
them by its then highly cultivated hetairce, they 
could print and disperse, from their hidden presses, 
seditious tracts which set the heart of the nation on 
fire. It was not the ideals of a ripe self-conscious- 
ness, such as Kiyonaga had attempted ; it was a 
struggle of living desires against outworn conven- 
tions and hopeless tyrannies. Hence, the two phases 
of a new Ukioye art — its pressure outward toward 
fuller scientific realisms, and its frank recreations in 
the vulgarities of its surroundings." 

In addition to the restlessness growing out of such 
political conditions, we should remember that it is 
not the nature of the human race to be satisfied even 
with perfection for very long. Kiyonaga, with all 
his placid beauty, could not forever suffice men who 
felt themselves to be living as passionately " modern " 
lives as we do to-day. Change was required to keep 
them interested ; and since the idealization of sound 
vitality could hardly be pushed farther than Kiyonaga 
had taken it, the obvious path for the artist lay in the 
direction of fantastic variations on the old theme and 
in the idealization of the erotic phantoms evoked by 



260 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

uneasy weariness. New refinements had to be intro- 
duced ; new emotions had to be stirred ; and the 
unending search for novelty led in due time to 
strained efiforts. perverted mannerisms, and distorted 
outlooks upon life. 

So much for that part of the decadence which was 
due merely to the desire for change. But there was 
another element of even more definite operation. It 
is fairly clear that part of the fatal development 
resulted Trom that slow drift toward realism which 
we have seen growing, period by period, since the 
days of the Primitives. The age of Harunobu, with 
its new technical resources, had abandoned pure 
decoration and aspired to put into its designs some- 
thing of the flavour of life. The age of Kiyonaga, 
with its complete mastery of technique, had projected 
into its designs its observation of real beings — drawn 
with a fine idealization, but nevertheless based on a 
deep fidelity to concrete forms. The age of Utamaro 
had a choice of only two steps left to take if it were 
to advance to any new position — a step in the direc- 
tion of still closer fidelity to nature, or a step in the 
direction of complete revolt from naturalism into 
regions of wild phantasy. Characteristically, it 
took both ! 

Particular instances will show this. Utamaro and 
Sharaku recorded the peculiarities of real things with 
a sharpness of observation and an accuracy of render- 
ing that the earlier artists had never approached. 
And at the same time they used these sharply 
mastered details of nature as mere brick and mortar 
out of which to construct fantastic edifices of the 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 261 

most unbridled imagination. Because they were 
geniuses, they did this and created masterpieces ; 
but they left to later times and lesser artists only 
the sterile heritage of a deadening realism which 
they had found it convenient to employ, but to 
which they themselves had never been truly subject. 

At the beginning of this period Yeishi, Choki, 
Sharaku, and the young Utamaro produced work 
that ranks quite as high in beauty as that of pre- 
ceding days. Yeishi's visionary figures of women, 
drawn with a disembodied and fragile grace, are in 
their way matchless things, whose only fault is their 
lack of virile strength. Choki's finest works are 
wholly beyond praise. Sharaku, the supreme master 
of actor-portraits and one of the great artists of the 
world, created designs of stupendous power ; if there 
is any trace of decadence in him it is not weakness 
but brutality. Utamaro, in his earlier years at least, 
was as wholesome as Kiyonaga ; and even when, in 
later times, he turned to figures that have about 
them an indescribable atmosphere of languor and 
decline, he made of them designs that are to many 
people the most beautiful productions of the whole 
school. In all of these men, technical power and sense 
of composition were of unimpaired vigour. Why, then 
it may be asked, should we speak of the decadence ? 

The answer lies partly in the fact that these 
productions, as a rule, express in their languid or 
overstrained figures tendencies of emotional super- 
refinement and nervous tension that impress every 
beholder with a sense of disintegration, and partly 
in the history of later days. For the moment, the 



262 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

rivalry between the great men of the period was so 
keen as to sustain what was, after all, the dying 
effort of their art. The successes of each one spurred 
the others on to new types and new feverish devices, 
feeding thus the flames of the desire for novelty 
among the people. But the end was at hand. By 
1800, in the later work of Utamaro, in most of the 
work of Toyokuni, and in practically all the work 
of their followers, genuine artistic weakness appeared, 
sensationalism took the place of vigour, garishness 
supplanted harmony, and crude emotions, crude 
drawing, crude colour became the common feature. 
The ancient sense of style gave way to a desire to 
push pictorial effects beyond their legitimate boundary, 
and the edge of the abyss was in sight. 

But before that moment came there remained 
sixteen years in the productions of which we shall 
find beauties less sane and sound than those of 
Kiyonaga, but nevertheless perpetually delighting. 

HOSODA Yeishi. 

Poriraif of a IVoman. 

Out of the silence of dead years 
Your slender presence seems to move — 
A fragrance that no time outwears — 
A perilous messenger of love. 

From far your wistful beauty brings 
A wonder that no lips may speak — 
A music dumb save as it clings 
About your shadowy throat and cheek. 

Longing is round you like that haze 
Of luminous and tender glow 
Which memory in the later days 
Gives vanished days of long ago. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 263 

And he who sees you must retrace 
All sweetness that his life has known, 
And with the vision of your face 
Link some lost vision of his own. 

The long curves of your saffron dress — 
The outline of your delicate mould — 
Your strange unearthly slendemess 
Seem like a wraith's that strayed of old 

Out of some region where abide 
Fortunate spirits without stain, 
Where nothing lovely is denied, 
And pain is only beauty's pain. 

Strange ! that in life you were a thing 
Common to many for delight. 
Thrall to the revelries that fling 
Their gleam across the fevered night — 

A holy image in the grasp 
Of pagans careless to adore ; 
A pearl secreted in the clasp 
Of oozy weeds on some lost shore. 

My thought shrinks back from what I see, 
And wanders dumb in poisoned air — 
Then leaps, inexpUcably free. 
Remembering that you were fair ! 

Beloved were you in your prime 
By one, of all, who came as guest, — 
A wastrel strange, whose gaze could climb 
To where your beauty lit the west. 

One, — in whose secret heart there moved 
Some far and unforgotten stir 
Of ancient, holy beauties loved, — 
Here paused, a sudden worshipper. 

Methinks he moved in dusks apart 
Through that profound and trembling hour 
When you within his doubting heart 
Touched all the desert into flower. 

13 



264 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

And where you rose a world's delight, 
For him the dark veils from you fell, — 
As earthly clouds from star-strewn night 
Withdraw, and leave a miracle. 

Not Oiran then, but maid ; remote 
From tyrant powers of waste desire. 
Who drew these hands, this slender throat, 
Saw you 'mid skaken winds of fire. 

You were a shape of wonder, set 
To crown the seeking of his days. 
For you his lonely eyes were wet ; 
With you his soul walked shrouded ways. 

And though the burning night might keep 
You servient to some lord's carouse, 
For him you rose from such a deep 
With maiden dawn-light on your brows. 

Pale Autumn with ethereal glow 
Hovered your delicate figure near ; 
And ever round you whispered low 
Her voices, and the dying year. 

A year — a day — and then the leaves 
Purpureal, ashen, umber, red. 
Wove for you both through waning eves 
A gorgeous carpet gloomward spread. 

And with that waning, you had gone, 
Through changes that love fears to trace — 
No later lover could have known 
Your wistful and alluring face — 

Your music, quivering in thin air, 
Had fled with life that filled your veins — 
But he for whom you were so fair 
Dreamed ; and the troubled dream remains. 

Time, that is swift to smite and rend 
The common things that spring from earth, 
Dares not so surely set an end 
To shapes of visionary birth. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 265 



There often his destroying touch 
Lingers as with a lulled caress, 
Adding, to that which has so much, 
An alien ghostly loveliness. 

So shall your beauty, crescent, pass 
From me through many a later hand, 
Each year more luminous than it was — 
O April out of Sunset Land ! 

The career of Hosoda Yeishi as a print-designer 
began about 1780 at the time when Kiyonaga was 
in full sway, and lasted until 
shortly after the beginning of the 
nineteenth century — a date when 
Kiyonaga had for some years 
been in retirement. Thus in 
Yeishi perhaps more fully than 
in any other artist except Uta- 
maro may be observed the crucial 
transition from the period of Ki- 
yonaga to the period of complete 
decline. 

Yeishi was originally a noble of 
high rank who studied under Kano 
Yeisen, the court painter ; and not 
even in the last years of his career, 
when vulgarizing influences were 
dominant, did he lose the refinement and aristocratic 
delicacy that are his most striking characteristics. 
Shortly before he became a Ukioye painter he had 
been attached to the household of the Shogun 
lyeharu. It is not difficult to imagine the horror 
of Yeishi's early circle of associates when he threw 
over conventionality and station, and plunged into 




266 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

the vie de Bohhne of a popular painter. " This 
youth," remarks Fenollosa, " doubtless shocked all 
his friends in tiring of the solemn old Chinese poets 
who had been gliding about in impossible landscapes 
since Tanyu first labelled them, and of the semi- 
serious, long-headed old gods who gave knowing 
winks to their turtles and storks, and in running 
off to such abominable haunts of the cow-headed 
Buddhist Satan as Danjuro's theatre-pit, fragrant 
with the odours of saki and raw fish, or the lantern- 
hung balconies of merry damsels on the river-boats." 
But the elegant court gentleman was not destined 
to sink in the maelstrom. To this underworld he 
brought his own subtlety of vision and evoked 
from it figures of unfading beauty. At the outset 
Kiyonaga was his guide — a guide perhaps too blindly 
followed. Certainly Yeishi's first productions, superb 
as they were, cannot be called his most character- 
istic. Plate 35 is an example. They are wholly 
in the Kiyonaga manner except that they have a 
touch of fragility and delicacy that is alien to 
Kiyonaga, The proportions of the figures are the 
same, but Yeishi's curves are less naturalistic ; they 
seem the product of one whose hungry visions lapped 
like waves against the shore of reality, shaping it into 
contours determined by their own demands. The 
" feeling of repose " which Mr. Strange notes is not 
repose at all but weariness. At first the perfect poise 
of these forms may deceive us ; but as we advance 
along the calendar of Yeishi's work we find it per- 
vaded by a spirit less serene, more high-strung, more 
drugged with beauty than was Kiyonaga's. 




YEISHI : THREE LADIES BY THE SEASHORE. 
Oae sheet of a triptych. Size 15 x 10.— Signed Yeishi ga. 



Flate 35. 



267 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 269 

In what we may call Yeishi's second style, he gives 
the peculiarities of his nature full expression. The 
tall slender figures cease to recall Kiyonaga's ; the 
robust vigour goes out of them ; they become im- 
palpable, wistful creatures, hovering before us with 
slow grace, moving by us in grave procession. These 
beautiful women are like creatures seen in a dream ; 
they have the solemnity and aloofness of priestesses 
intent on the performance of secret rites. Their long 
robes sweep in stately pageant ; their delicate heads 
bend in exquisite weariness. 

Fenollosa strangely speaks of the " keenness of 
Yeishi's characterizations," and says that, " with no 
idealizations to trouble him, he put down what he 
saw as frankly as a young reporter." This is a sur- 
prising misinterpretation. Yeishi was perhaps more 
notably a visionary than any other Ukioye artist ; 
he was haunted by supersensible intimations, 
perverted by a search for unearthly beauty. A 
fascinating painter ! He has not the brilliancy and 
versatility of Utamaro ; but the taste is hard to 
please which finds monotony in his series of per- 
fections. In his second period — his most individual 
and powerful — he produced compositions that are 
hardly inferior to Kiyonaga's. Yeishi may be 
regarded as one of the few designers who perfectly 
mastered the triptych form. His arrangements are 
simpler than Kiyonaga's but no less beautiful. A 
notable series depicting various polite occupations 
from the life of Prince Genji are so harmonious in 
design, so lovely in colour, and so instinct with 
spiritual refinement as to rank among his finest works. 



270 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

In some of these triptychs Yeishi introduces his in- 
teresting colour-invention — a scheme of grey, yellow, 
violet, blue, and black, which he handles superbly. 
Among his other triptychs, " The Treasure Ship " 
is especially notable. In this print, a barge whose 
prow is shaped like the head and breast of the 
mythical Hoho bird seems adrift on a river of peace ; 
its wonderful freight — nine noble ladies engaged in 
the refined entertainments of paintings, games, and 
poetry — express the nostalgia of Watteau's figures 
and the line-beauty of Botticelli's. The repose of 
heaven is upon them, and the delicate satiety of 
heavenly beings. 

Yeishi was one of the few painters besides Shun- 
man who successfully managed grey as a dominant 
tone. In certain of his prints he produced notable 
results in this manner, using a style in which lights of 
yellow and purple are arranged with beautiful effect. 
Sometimes, though rarely, he omitted them altogether, 
as in Plate 37, and contented himself with modula- 
tions of pure grey that are the last word in subtlety. 

He produced a considerable number of notable full- 
size sheets depicting single figures of women seated 
or kneeling, engaged in gracious occupations such as 
flower-arrangement. Some of these are without 
background ; others have backgrounds of pale grey 
wash ; while still others, perhaps the finest of all, 
stand out against luminous yellow grounds. One 
of these appears in Plate 36. In these prints is 
displayed Yeishi's power to draw exquisitely the 
long sweeping curves of draperies ; and the strangely 
pensive, hieratic quality of his faces is at its best. 




Plate 36. 



YEISHI : LADY WITH TOBACCO-PIPE. 
Yellow background. Size 15 x 10. Signed Ycishi ga. 

271 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 273 

Their charm lies not in the brushwork, which is never 
as free and bold as Kiyonaga's, but in the sentiment 
of remote beauty of which these haunting curves are 
such pure symbols. He also produced a number 
of groups of courtesans on parade, with little or 
no background, after the fashion inaugurated by 
Koriusai and Kiyonaga. These appear stiff beside 
Kiyonaga's ; but they have nevertheless great charm 
of line and colour. His album of the Thirty-six 
Poetesses, about 1800, is a series of fantastic and 
gorgeous colour-dreams. His series of standing 
women against chocolate or silver backgrounds rises 
in colour to the level of Sharaku. 

Yeishi could not, however, escape the influence of 
the growing decadence. The public taste at the 
end of the eighteenth century was debased by a 
craving for gaudy eccentricities. Utamaro led in the 
rush to gratify this craving ; and even the aristo- 
cratic Yeishi was unable to resist the general decline. 
Therefore toward the end of his career as a print- 
designer his work greatly altered. His figures grew 
very tall and willowy ; their necks became so 
exaggeratedly thin that they seem unable to support 
the great pile of the coiffure ; an attenuated snaky- 
ness distinguishes their lines ; and the curves of their 
garments are distorted into the most fantastic folds 
and swirls. It was in this period that Yeishi pro- 
duced most of his large bust-portraits on yellow or 
mica grounds ; in these he followed the lead of 
Utamaro, who had influenced him considerably 
during his whole career. The noble and grave faces 
of his earlier days became wooden and distorted ; 



274 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



and when Yeishi at last stopped print-designing and 
returned to the life of society and painting from 
which he had been so long a renegade, the loss was 
not a great one ; for the degradation of the age's 
taste had engulfed him — as, indeed, it did all his 
contemporaries. 

Yeishi's ordinary work is not particularly rare. 
Even his slightest prints have so much charm that 
they may be highly recommended to the attention 
of the modest collector. Yeishi's important works 
are of great scarcity. His figures on yellow or mica 
ground, his grey prints, his large heads, and his 
pillar-prints are quite as difficult to obtain as any of 
the prints of this or the preceding period ; his best 

triptychs are extraordinarily hard 

to procure. 



Yeisho. 
Of Yeishi's many pupils, Shoko- 
sai Yeisho stands out as the most 
important. Nothing is known of 
him except that his work was done 
toward the end of the eighteenth 
century. 

Yeisho may be regarded as the 
veritable shadow of Yeishi. He 
wholly adopted his master's style ; 
but he was not able to impart to 
his figures that reserved aristocratic 
poise which was Yeishi's dis- 
mark. Instead, Yeisho's figures not 
have a certain very pleasing and 




tinguishing 
infrequently 




YEISHi: INTERIOR OPENING ON TO THE SEASHORE. 

Left-hand sheet of a triptych. Printed in several tones of grey. Size 15 x 10. 
Signed Yeishi ga. Metzgar Collection. 



J'/a^g 37. 



275 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 277 

plausible elegance, fuller and rounder than his 
master's. His curves sweep more assertively and 
less subtly ; and his decorative effects are often 
superb even though not particularly complex. He 
too passed from the manner of Kiyonaga into that 
of Utamaro ; but his middle period is his most 
characteristic. In this he produced many fascinating 
single sheets of seated or kneeling women, several 
admirable pillar-prints, as in Plate 33, some large 
bust-portraits that are perhaps his finest works, 
and a number of triptychs. These last, as a rule, 
lack the element that is the real glory of the 
triptych — a broadly grasped correlation of complex 
elements into one great harmonious composition. 
Yeisho's triptychs are merely three sheets placed 
side by side with only a rudimentary attempt at 
unification. But so completely attractive are the 
separate figures and the great sweeping curves of 
his best work that these triptychs are nevertheless 
delightful productions — more striking than many a 
subtler composition. They have, however, a stereo- 
typed quality that makes one unwilling to take 
Yeisho very seriously as an artist. His curves 
sweep splendidly, but they are dominated by a 
formula. 

Yeisho's works are not common ; they are far 
rarer than Yeishi's. Yeisho may serve to illustrate 
the difficulty of appraising these artists. I had 
hardly written the foregoing estimate of Yeisho 
when I received as a gift from a friend a large 
bust-portrait of a woman by Yeisho which is so 
unexpectedly magnificent and so much finer than 



278 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

any work of Yeisho's I had ever seen that my 
previous opinion had to be modified. In subtlety 
of line and delicacy of colour this head is at least 
equal to Utamaro's finest works in the same manner ; 
it utterly contradicts my previous impression of 
Yeisho's stereotyped quality. Now, what has hap- 
pened to me in the case of Yeisho is happening 
to students of Japanese prints every day ; and not 
until the last secreted treasure is brought to light and 
made known can we be confident that we are even 
approximately right in the ranks which we assign to 
the various designers. 

Other Pupils of Yeishi. 

Yeishi's vigour, barely sufficient to create his 
own exquisite works, could not transmit itself to any 
very vital body of pupils. Though his disciples 
were many, no one of them achieved independent 
renown ; the seeds of life were not in the teacher. 
Out of a large number, the following pupils may be 
named as the most important : — 

ICHIRAKUTEI Yeisui, of whom nothing is known, 
inherited from his master an elegance of line that is 
often pleasing. He cannot, however, be regarded 
as an important or original artist. His large bust- 
portraits, with charming piquant faces, are his best- 
known works. His prints are rare but not especially 
sought after. 

GOKYO, an interesting artist who probably died 
young, worked in the same manner as Yeishi. His 
prints, soft and pleasing in colour, are very rare 
indeed ; the few known examples of his work have 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 279 

a distinction worthy of more attention than they 
have hitherto received. Had he lived he might have 
given the school of Yeishi a fresh fame. 

Yeiri, of whom not much is known, sometimes 
signed himself " Yeishi's pupil Yeiri." He is to 
be distinguished from the almost contemporaneous 
Rekisenti Yeiri. The latter worked more in the style 
of Utamaro ; his work is rare, and his finest prints 
are beautiful and valuable. It was Yeishi's pupil 
Yeiri who created that rare and astonishing portrait 
of Kitao Masanobu which must take a place beside 
the most brilliant portraiture of any time or land. 

Yeishin is known only by half a dozen prints ; 
these, though attractive, are not as greatly prized 
as their scarcity might lead one to expect. 

Chotensai Yeiju is a slightly stiff and not 
very interesting disciple whose work is rare. 

Yeicho also is notable chiefly for his rarity. 

Yeiru followed his master with little originality. 

Yeiki and Soraku are later unimportant pupils 
who followed Utamaro also. 

Utamaro. 

Portrait of a Woman. 

In robes like clouds of sunset rolled 
About the dying sun, 
In splendid vesture of purple and gold 
That a thousand toiling days have spun 
For thee, O imperial one ! — 

With the cunning pomp of the later years, 
With their pride and glory and stress, 
Thou risest ; and thy calm forehead bears 
These like a crown; but thy frail mouth wears 
All of their weariness. 



280 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Thou art one of the great who mayest stand 
Where Cleopatra stood : 
Aspasia, Rhodope, at each hand ; 
And even the proud tempestuous mood 
Of Sappho shall rule thy blood. 

Thy throat, in its slender whiteness bare, 
Seems powerless to sustain 
The gorgeous tower of thy gold-decked hair — 
Like a lily's stem which the autumn air 
Maketh to shrink and wane. 

More haunting music, more luring love 
Round thy sinuous form hold sway 
Than the daughters of earth have knowledge of ; 
For thou art the daughter of fading day, 
Touched with all hope's decay. 

And the subtle languor, the prismic glow 
Of a ripeness overpast 
Burns through the wonderful curving flow 
Of thy garments ; and they who love thee know 
A loathing at the last. 

For they are the lovers of living things — 
Stars, sunlight, morning's breath ; 
But thou, for all that thy beauty brings 
Such songs as the summer scattereth — 
Thou art of the House of Death. 



But there was one in thy golden day 
Who saw thy poppied bloom, 
And loved not thee but the heart's decay 
That filled thee, and clasped it to be alway 
His chosen and sealed doom. 

He who this living portrait wrought, 
Outlasting time's control, 
A dark and bitter nectar sought 
Welling from poisoned streams that roll 
Through deserts of the soul. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 281 

Ah, dreamer ! come at last where dreams 
Can serve no more thy need, 
Who hast by such bright silver streams 
Walked with thy soul that now earth seems 
A waste where love must bleed — 

Thou whom such matchless beauty filled 
Of visions frail and lone, 
For thee all passion now is stilled ; 
Thy heart, denied the life it willed, 
Desireth rather none. 

And thee allure no verdant blooms 
That with fresh joy suspire ; 
But blossoms touched with coming glooms, 
And weariness, and spent desire, 
Draw to thy spirit nigher. 

Wherefore is nothing in thy sight 
Propitious save it be 

Brushed with the wings of hovering night, 
Worn with the shadow of delight. 
Sad with satiety. 

For thou hast enmity toward all 
The servants of life's breath ; 
One mistress holdeth thee in thrall, 
And them thou lovest who her call 
Answer ; and she is Death. 



Now Death thy ruined city's streets 
Walketh, a grisly queen. 
And there her sacred horror greets 
Him who invades these waste retreats, 
Her sacrosanct demesne — 

In robes like clouds at sunset rolled 
About the dying sun, 
In splendid vestments of purple and gold 
That a thousand perished years have spun 
For her, the Imperial One. 



282 CHATS ON JAPANESE FEINTS 



Utamaro, the central and in some ways the most 
fascinating figure of this period, has been from the 
first a great favourite in the esteem of European 
collectors. His graceful, sinuous women are the 
images that come most readily to the minds of 
many people at the mention of Japanese prints. In 
his own time and land his popu- 
larity was equalled by that of no 
other artist. 

It was by his portraits of women 
that Utamaro won his great fame. 
Passing outside the influence of 
Kiyonaga, he developed in his 
designs of the last decade of the 
nineteenth century his charac- 
teristic feminine type. Her strange 
LJkjr ^ and languid beauty, the drooping 

^^yj^ lines of her robes, her unnatural 

5slenderness and willowiness, are the 
emanations of Utamaro's feverish 
mind ; as her creator he ranks 
as the most brilliant, the most 
sophisticated, and the most poetical 
designer of his time. His life was 
spent in alternation between his workshop and the 
haunts of the Yoshiwara, whose beautiful inhabitants 
he immortalized in prints that are the ultimate 
expression of the mortal body's longing for a more 
than mortal perfection of happiness. Wearied of 
every common pleasure, he created these visions in 
whose disembodied, morbid loveliness his overwrought 
desires found consolation. 




UTAMARO. 





/' / 




UTAMARO : OKITA OF NANIWAYA, A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS. 
Mica background. Size i2| x 9. Signed Utamaro, hitsu. Chandler Collection. 



J^late 38. 



283 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 285 

Utamaro was born in 1753 in the province of 
Musachi. Early in life he went to Yedo and there 
studied under the noted Kano painter and book- 
illustrator Toriyama Sekiyen, whom some authorities 
say was his father. Almost from the beginning of 
his career he lived with the famous publisher Tsutaya, 
who issued his prints ; and this relation continued up 
to the date of Tsutaya's death in 1797. 

In Utamaro's early work, which began with an 
illustrated book in 1776, the influence of Kiyonaga 
was strong. Shunsho's and Kitao Masanobu's char- 
acteristics are sometimes also visible, but Kiyonaga's 
style is the dominating one. Some of his early work 
is signed Toyoaki. 

In 1780 the first important product of Utamaro's 
career saw the light — his famous " Gifts of the Ebb- 
Tide" — a book of exquisitely conceived and delicately 
printed representations of shells and rocks on the 
seashore. The effort of a trained conchologist to 
produce accurate descriptive drawings of these ob- 
jects could hardly achieve a more scrupulous fidelity 
than do these pages, which have in addition an 
aesthetic charm of a high order. The same char- 
acteristic appears in his celebrated " Insect Book " 
of 1788. These two works, dominated by a scientific 
realism that was new to Ukioye, may serve as an 
indication of the growth of that naturalistic spirit 
whose effect upon the stylistic ideals of the art was 
later to be so destructive. 

In the decade between 1780 and 1790 Utamaro 
produced many additional books. Notable among 
them are the " Customs of New Year's Day" (1786), 



286 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

" The Mad Full Moon," a series of lovely moonlight 
landscapes in monochrome (1789), and "The Silver 
World," a series of delicate snow scenes (1790). The 
single-sheet prints which he issued during this decade 
are exceedingly beautiful works of a type that the 
inexperienced eye would never recognize as Uta- 
maro's. The figures are like those of Kiyonaga's 
prime, but drawn with a slenderness of line and 
restlessness of poise that strikes a different and 
shriller note. His work of this period may be dis- 
tinguished by the fact that the signature is written 
in a squarer, more compact, and more formal manner 
than the sprawling, cursive signature of his later days. 
The two long, tail-like lines of the later signature, by 
which even the casual tourist learns to recognize 
Utamaro's name, are wholly absent. 

With 1790 begins the classic period of Utamaro's 
work. This was the year of Kiyonaga's retirement 
and, according to some authorities, of Shunsho's 
death. With the two giants of the older generation 
gone, Utamaro was left to compete for leadership 
with Yeishi, Shuncho, Choki, Toyokuni, and the 
lesser men. During the decade from 1790 to 1800 
Utamaro was, except for the isolated figure of 
Sharaku, outstandingly the most versatile and 
brilliant among them. All were profoundly in- 
fluenced by him, and he had not a few imitators 
who attempted to profit by his popularity. 

During this last decade of the nineteenth century 
Utamaro produced the greatest of his works. 
Among these must be counted the remarkable 
series of half-length figures on silver backgrounds, 




UTAMARO : TWO COURTESANS. 

One of a Series " Beautiful Women compared with the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido 
Road." Size 15 x 10. Signed Utamaro, hitsu. 



Plate 39. 



287 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 289 

for which no admiration can be too extreme. One 
of them appears in Plate 38. The type of face 
which Utamaro drew in these prints differs from 
the Kiyonaga type ; it has something of the girlish- 
ness of Harunobu or Sukenobu — wholesome, rounded, 
with eyes that are large and not narrowed to slits 
as in his later years, and with coiffure of modest 
proportions. It resembles the type characteristic 
of Choki at this time. These charming figures, 
drawn with subtle precision, stand against their dull 
silver backgrounds in colours whose few and soft 
tones produce an effect so harmonious as to almost 
justify Von Seidlitz in calling Utamaro " the first 
colourist of his nation." The prints of this class 
are as rare as they are beautiful. The collector who 
is familiar with nothing but the later work of the 
artist can have only an imperfect conception of the 
greatness of Utamaro. They constitute the purest 
and most tranquil of his productions, and perhaps 
the high point of his genius. 

This 1790 decade, when Utamaro was at the 
zenith of his powers, saw many triumphs besides 
the silver-portraits. He was incessantly busy with 
experiments of every kind ; pushed by the keen 
competition of Yeishi, Choki, and the others, he 
laboured incessantly for new effects and passed on 
to new manners. Plates 39 and 41 are examples. 
Discarding the type of head that had appeared in 
the silver-portraits, he devised that more restless, 
haunting type by which we best know him. The 
ethereal and supple bodies, the slender necks, the 
slightly strained poses, all indicate the nervous 
14 



290 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

hyper-aesthetic tension of the hour. Toward the 
end of the decade his pecuHarities grew even more 
marked. The necks of his figures became incredibly- 
slender ; the bodies took on unnatural length ; a 
snaky languor pervaded them. One print, his 
famous " Woman Seated on the Edge of a Veranda," 
reproduced in Plate 40, may serve as representative 
of them all. The drawing of the draperies and of 
the figure beneath them is studied with extra- 
ordinary fidelity ; in fact, so human and real a 
figure is hardly to be found in the work of any 
preceding artist. But on the other hand, Utamaro 
has used his keen realistic power merely as a 
scaffolding, and has proceeded to build up on it a 
work that goes over almost into the region of 
symbolism. In the slender delicacy of this figure, 
the splendid black of her elaborate coiffure, the 
drooping fragility of her body, the sensuous grace 
and refinement, the languor and exhaustion — in all 
these speak the super-sensible gropings and hungers 
of Utamaro himself. Out of a living woman he 
created his disturbing symbol of the impossible desires 
that are no less subtle or painful because they are born 
of the flesh. With nerves keyed beyond the healthy 
pitch, he dreamed this melody whose strange minor 
chords alone could stir the satiated spirit. He caught 
and idealized the lines and colours of mortal weariness. 
" Woman," says Von Seidlitz, " had always played 
a prominent part in the popular art of the country, 
but now Utamaro placed one type of the sex in the 
absolute centre of all attention — the type, namely, of 
the courtesan initiated into all the refinements of 




UTAMARO : WOMAK SEATED ON A VERANDA. 
Size 13 X 8. Signed Utamaro, hitsii. 



Plate 40. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 293 

mental culture as well as of bodily enchantment, 
and then playing in the life of Japan such a part 
as she must have played in Hellas during the golden 
age of Greek civilization. For expressing the in- 
expressible, the simple rendering of nature did not 
suffice ; the figures must needs be lengthened to give 
the impression of supernatural beings ; they must 
have a pliancy enabling them to express vividly the 
tenderest as well as the most intense emotions of 
the soul ; lastly, they must be endowed with a 
wholly peculiar and therefore affected language for 
uttering the wholly peculiar sensations that filled 
them. ... It is true that soon after he yielded to 
the general tendency of his age . . . and gradually 
insisted on these attributes to exaggeration, even to 
impossibility, while his fame of having been the 
first to give such morbid inclinations completely- 
satisfactory and therefore unsurpassable expression 
is a title of somewhat doubtful value, even if in 
any case a high historical significance cannot be 
denied it. Nevertheless, we must not forget that 
within this domain of the hyper-aesthetic Utamaro 
was the creator of a most original and individual 
style. Nay, if we could only admit the morbid and 
exaggerated to be as fit subject-matter for art as 
the healthy and sane, we must grant that this style 
is one of altogether enchanting originality, and that, 
however dangerous might be its immediate influence 
upon the spectator, and particularly upon possible 
successors, it does none the less lift us beyond the 
cramping limits of reality, and is therefore not 
wanting in idealisrn of a kind/' 



294 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

But weary as seems the spiritual content of these 
end-of-the-century designs of Utamaro's, there is no 
lack of brilliant vigour in their composition. The great 
triptychs — such as the " Night Festival on the Banks 
of the Sumida River," or the " Firefly Catchers," or 
the " Persimmon Pickers " — stand among the finest 
prints we know. In colour, rhythm of line, and 
dramatic quality of composition they are triumphs. 
There is a startling beauty in even those extra- 
ordinary bust-portraits in which the enormous coiffure, 
minute neck, slips of eyes, and dot of a mouth, carry 
exaggeration to a bizarre and delirious extreme. 

Not long after 1800 the pressure of work brought 
upon him by his great popularity, together with the 
effects of a none too well spent life in the Yoshiwara, 
combined to strain his powers unduly. His work 
no longer kept its earlier freshness ; his exaggera- 
tions became coarser ; his invention grew less fertile. 
He began to rely on the assistance of his pupils, as we 
know from his " Book of the Green Houses" (1804), 
in which several collaborated with him. Doubtless 
many an Utamaro print of this time is their work. 

In the year 1804 came the final catastrophe. 
Consequent upon the publication of the well-known 
triptych representing the ancient Shogun Hideyoshi 
entertaining his five concubines in the eastern quarter 
of the capital, the ruling Shogun lyenari took 
umbrage at the salacious disrespect to his ancestor 
and the delicately implied allusion to himself, and Uta- 
maro was thrown into prison for his offence. There 
he remained, it is said, for a year ; when he emerged, 
it was with impaired health and a broken spirit. 




UTAMARO : A YOUTHFUL PRINCE AND LADIES. 
Left-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 x 10. Signed Utamaro, hitsu. 



Plate 41. 



295 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 297 

His productions after this time were not comparable 
with his earlier work. In the year 1806 he died, and 
with him died the great days of the Japanese print. 

In this rapid survey it has been impossible to 
do justice to the many-sided powers of this great 
designer. His beautiful landscapes, his fine animal 
pictures, the tender and whimsical mother-and-child 
and domestic scenes he produced, have all had to 
be ignored in favour of his central achievements — 
his unparalleled designs of the courtesan of the 
Yoshiwara in her weary glory. Certainly no more 
varied and distinguished talent than his illumines 
the roll of Ukioye artists. Beside his perpetually 
fresh invention even the great Kiyonaga seems 
stereotyped and academic. 

To-day the poorer examples of Utamaro's work 
are still readily procurable. His greatest works are 
rare. Certain of his triptychs, his silver half-length 
portraits, and his large heads on mica backgrounds, 
are very uncommon. But with patience and judg- 
ment the collector may still obtain now and then a 
fine specimen of Utamaro's work. 

But some care is necessary. Even during 
Utamaro's life his work was forged by unscrupulous 
persons who hoped to reap the benefit of his popu- 
larity ; and his pupils, under his direction, produced 
an unknown quantity of work signed with his name. 
After his death, from about 1808 to 1820, the Second 
Utamaro worked in the manner of his predecessor, 
issuing work that cannot with certainty be distin- 
guished from the late work of the master. Besides 
these perils there is the fact that Utamaro's prints 



298 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

have been well reproduced in recent years ; and 
reproductions are sometimes put forward as originals 
by ignorant or dishonest dealers. Considerable 
familiarity with authentic examples of Utamaro's 
best work, or expert advice, can alone protect the 
would-be purchaser. 

Pupils and Followers of Utamaro. 

Though Utamaro's influence upon his contem- 
poraries was incalculably great, he left behind him a 
body of pupils who were almost without exception 
rather insignificant artists. With cruder colour and 
composition, they carried still farther the vulgarities 
of Utamaro's declining period. Among them may be 
mentioned the following men : — 

Utamaro II, whose original name was Koikawa 
Shuncho or Harumachi, was a pupil of Sekiyen ; he 
married Utamaro's widow, and from about 1808 to 
1820 continued to produce prints in the debased 
Utamaro manner. Dr. Kurth believes he must be 
distinguished from another Koikawa Shuncho whose 
family name was Kurahashi, and who died in 1789. 
The whole matter is by no means clear. 

Banki and Shikimaro were among the best of this 
group. Particularly the former, before Utamaro's 
death, produced some fine work. 

Tamagawa Shucho was a rare pupil of Utamaro 
who worked about 1790 to 18 10. 

KiKUMARO I (who also called himself KiTAGAWA 
TSUKIMARO), KiKUMARO II, TaNIMOTO TsUKIMARO, 
TAKEMARO, TOYOMARO, YUKIMARO I, YUKIMARO II, 

Yoshimaro I (also called Kitao Shigemasa III), 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 299 

YOSHIMARO II, Rekesenti Sogaku, Goshichi, 

HiDEMARO, MiTEMARO, MiNEMARO, KiTAMARO, 
MiCHIMARO, TOSHIMARO, HaNAMARO, ISOMARO, 

ASHIMARO, Kanamaro, Kunimaro, Yoshimune, 

YOSHITORA, YOSHITSUYA, YOSHIKI, YOSHIMORI, 
YOSHITOSHI, YOSHIKATA, YeNCHO, YUMIAKI, 

HoKOKUjiN FuYO, Chikanobu, Shintoku, Shun- 

KIOSAI, HiSANOBU, SORAKU, SENKA, RyUKOKU, 

Sekkyo, Sekicho, Sekiho, Sekijo may all be classed 
as late followers, fellow-pupils, or rivals of Utamaro. 

BUNRO, some of whose work is fine, was a rare 
imitator of Utamaro. He worked chiefly about 
1800 to 1 8 10. 

Sharaku. 

Dramatic Portrait, 

Whence art thou come, 
Tall figure clasping to thy tragic breast 
Thy orange robe, a flame amid the gloom — 
By what wild doom 
Art thou forever onward — onward pressed? 

A wreath is on thy brow, 
A crown of leafage from some lonely haunt 
Where might Medea's shade brood ministrant. 
Thy shoulders bow 
Beneath what fearful weight, what need, what vow ? 

A leopard fierce — 
A ghost that wanders down the wandering wind — 
A fury tracking toward some shaken mind — 
Where shall I find 
The divination that thy veil shall pierce ? 

How shall I wrest 
From thee the secret of thy lofty doom — 
From what wild gulf of midnight thou dost come 
Who, with clutched breast, 
Stalkest forever onward — onward pressed? 



300 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



Few people approach Sharaku's work for the first 
time without regarding him as a repulsive charlatan, 
the creator of perversely and senselessly ugly por- 
traits whose cross-eyes, impossible mouths, and 
snaky gestures have not the slightest claim to be 
called art. At first these strange 
pictures may even seem mirth- 
provoking to the spectator — a view 
of them which he will remember 
in later years with almost in- 
credulous wonder. To overcome 
one's original feeling of repulsion 
may take a long time ; but to 
every serious student of Japanese 
^l^%V prints there comes at last a day 

/|fi| when he sees these portraits with 

I different eyes ; and suddenly the 

kr^^ay consciousness is born in him that 

IJqI Sharaku stands on the highest 

^fy\\ level of genius, in a greatness 

^ unique, sublime, and appalling. 

Toshiusai Sharaku is a figure 
more shadowy than most, even in 
this region of shadows. The wilful 
neglect of a public that hated him 
has folded him in a mystery deeper 
than the mere accidental obscura- 
tions of time. Of his birth and death we know 
absolutely nothing, nor of the name of his teacher, if 
he had one. The resemblance between his work and 
that of Shunyei cannot be fully explained until we 
know more accurately their relative dates. Kiyonaga's 




TOSHIUSAI 
SHARAKU. 




•SHARAKU : THE ACTOR ARASHI RYUZO IX THE ROLE OF ONE OF THE 
FORTY-SEVEX ROXIX. 

Silver background. Size 14 x 10. Signed Toshiiisai SJiakani ga. Spaulding Collection. 

J'laU 42. 

301 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 303 

noble drawing certainly affected his style. The 
influence of Shunsho upon his colour-schemes is 
fairly obvious ; but we do not know whether this was 
due to personal contact, or only to familiarity with 
Shunsho's work. The one indisputable fact about 
Sharaku is that he was originally a No-performer in 
the troupe of the Daimyo of Awa. The Japanese 
authorities state that he worked at print-designing 
only one or two years, somewhere between 1790 and 
1795. Dr. Kurth, in his stimulating but somewhat 
too imaginative volume, " Sharaku," believes that 
the evidence justifies us in fixing Sharaku's working 
period as a much longer time — 1787 to 1795 ; but he 
cannot be said to have wholly proved his case. 
Whether or not these dates are accurate, we may at 
least say that Sharaku's years of activity lay chiefly 
within the early part of the last decade of the 
eighteenth century. 

Sharaku's work consisted entirely of startlingly 
powerful and ironic portraits of actors, some in the 
form of large bust-portraits, some in the form of full- 
length figures of hoso-ye size, and a few large sheets 
each containing two full-length figures. Their savage 
intensity is arresting and unforgettable ; it at once 
drives one to consider what manner of man could 
have created them. 

Sharaku was, as we have said, professionally a 
member of the No-troupe of the Daimyo of Awa. 
This fact is of far-reaching significance. 

The No was a highly developed and aristocratic 
form of lyrical drama, based upon ancient and 
classical legends ; it was full of a poetry and allusive- 



304 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

ness that made it incomprehensible to the populace, 
who, indeed, had no opportunity to see it ; it was as 
much the exclusive concern of the cultured aristocracy 
as the private revival of a Greek tragedy is with us 
to-day. In brocaded costumes, perhaps the treasured 
reliques of centuries ago, the No-dancer appeared 
upon his empty stage before a hushed audience of 
nobles — his face masked, as were the faces of the 
Greek actors, his voice lifted to an unnatural pitch 
of vibrant chaunting; and with stately motions, 
elaborately devised steps, and stereotyped gestures, 
he intoned the rolling strophes of the drama's long 
and hallowed strain. A complex formalism pervaded 
every word and step ; in no art-form with which I 
am familiar is an accepted convention, a totally 
unrealistic medium, so rigidly adhered to as in these 
No-plays. 

The No-actors were a caste utterly apart from the 
actors of the common stage. They were the proteges 
and associates of great nobles who would not, save 
incognito, appear in the presence of the common 
actor. The gap between the two classes of actors 
was as great as that between Sir Johnston Forbes- 
Robertson and a juggler at a fair — one, the inheritor 
of a distinguished literary tradition, the interpreter 
of our classic dramatic heritage ; the other, a crude 
beguiler of the populace, with station no higher than 
the pedlar. Caste-feeling may very well have been 
rather harsh between the haughty No-performers and 
their despised and ostracized brothers of the gutter. 

As we have noted, the No-dancer wore a mask ; 
these masks are creations of the greatest interest. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 305 

They are carved out of wood, frequently with a skill 
that makes them striking works of art. It is im- 
possible to convey in words the remarkable degree of 
characterization which they express. The smooth 
guilelessness of the young girl, the deep wrinkles of 
the old man, the leer of the rascal, the savagery of 
the villain, are all in their turn summarized in these 
haunting representations whose simplicity of outline 
is matched only by their intensity of effect. Nature 
seems to speak in them — but a heightened nature, 
stripped of all incidentals ; the very essence of the 
character of the role is revealed to our eyes the 
instant the actor, wearing his impressive and vivid 
mask, steps upon the stage. 

Bearing these things in mind, we may follow Dr. 
Kurth ("Sharaku," Munchen, 1910) in his imaginative 
summary of the probable effects of the calling of a 
No-dancer upon the mind and art of Sharaku : — 

" Picture a richly endowed painter — at first only 
dimly conscious of his powers — as in a mystery-play 
he treads the consecrated stage in the sacred precincts 
of a temple of Tokushima or in the shadow of the 
cryptomerias and firs of the Hachisuka castle — a 
fantastic mask covering his features, other masked 
spectres before his eyes — surrounded by the atmo- 
sphere of the occult tradition of ancient and lofty 
dramatic art — while, in the depths of his soul's 
abysses, chained Titans would storm up to the outer 
world, and confused pictures of his future creations 
hover before his spirit, . . . and we shall realize 
that this man, as a painter, must become a drama- 
turgist. 



306 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

" And if we summon to our vision the gorgeous 
stretches of Awa — its chasmy mountains with the 
forests rustling around them — its picturesque sea- 
lapped beaches — its sun-drenched groves of oak — its 
glowing scarlet maples — the brilliant flowers of its 
Spring — the evergreens of its Winter — then we shall 
realize that this man, as a painter, must become a 
colour-dreamer. 

" Brooding spirit that he was, he, an Edipus, 
approached venturously to the Sphinx of passion 
that peers forth from the faces of men. Uncanny 
powers lurked in the grotesque furrows and demoniac 
grimaces of his No-masks, but nothing little or 
shallow — nay, in spite of all grotesqueness, only the 
significant and symbolic. And then he looked down 
from his buskined height upon the popular actors — 
bombastic barn-stormers — greasy low-comedians — 
louts from nowhere, as the illustrious Harunobu had 
called them — performers who brought before their 
gaping audience not, as did he, august things in 
strangely wonderful guise, but often things far too 
human in strutting stage-pomp. He looked upon 
them, a guild not only despised but sometimes even 
outlawed — a guild that stood on the same plane as 
the idiotic profession of the wrestler, — a class whose 
vulgar faces could not hide their swaggering gutter- 
vanity and their cringing lust for applause behind 
even the red paint of the ferocious warrior-role or the 
corpse-coloured rice-powder used when aping women. 
And if we see him thus, we shall understand that 
this man, as a painter of actors, must eventually 
become a pitiless satirist." 






FOUETH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 307 

It was therefore with the colossal and tragic 
gestures of the No-dance in his soul, the distorted 
and monumental intensity of the No-masks in his 
eyes, and the contempt and irony of the No- 
performer for the common actor in his heart, that 
Sharaku, coming to Yedo, took up his terrible brush 
to depict the Yedo actors as he saw them. The 
resulting series of portraits is surely one of the 
supreme examples of graphic characterization and 
devastating contempt that the world has ever seen. 

In the earlier portion of Sharaku's work, among 
which are his large portraits on yellow backgrounds, 
the originality of the man is already striking enough ; 
but his acid qualities are hardly at their fullest 
development. Certain of his hoso-ye prints must 
belong to this first period ; in these, after the manner 
of Shunsho, he devoted his attention chiefly to the 
attaining of a powerful dramatic rendering of the 
role he was depicting. Strutting Daimyo, beguiling 
woman, ferocious warrior, shrewd peasant — he made 
each part move with the vigour and force of the seen 
stage. Shunsho was never more impressive ; and 
here, in addition, there is in every design a strange 
distortion of line, a disturbing abnormality of pose, 
that makes one realize that no mere copyist of 
Shunsho is at hand. 

Then, beginning with an astounding series of 
twenty-four portraits with niica backgrounds (Plates 
42, 43, 44) representing actors in the play of the 
Forty-seven Ronin, Sharaku's mood changes. He 
ceases to remind one at all of Shunsho ; it is rather 
the scrutinizing individual characterization of Shunyei 



308 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

that he recalls. But Shunyei never reached the point 
to which Sharaku is now coming. The dramatic 
force, the histrionic illusion of his pictures abates no 
jot ; but beyond it, disturbing lights and movements 
are lurking. The mighty role towers like a shadow 
before us in its full dramatic sweep ; but from the 
depths of the shadow peers with stealthy glance the 
indwelling personality of the actor — like a jackal's 
eyes seen suddenly in a king's tomb. This contra- 
diction — this complex of two utterly antagonistic 
forces — is one of the miracles of Sharaku's genius : 
it is an antinomy which he resolves sufficiently to 
produce an equilibrium, but not enough to take from 
these portraits the insoluble mystery of two spirits, 
the tangle of two meanings, the explosive and in- 
scrutable life that makes them unforgettable. 

Thus the sweeping rhetoric of the stately role and 
the sudden naturalistic cry of the discovered actor's 
soul meet in a discord unique, subtly calculated, 
magnificent, and harrowing. Sharaku pierced deep 
into the hearts of his sitters to grasp the weak, the 
grotesque, the pathetic, the tragic ; he appraised the 
lust, the horror, the vacuity that was there, and these 
qualities he dragged out to the light through the 
avenues by which he had entered — through the eyes, 
the lips, the hands — tearing these gates into terrible 
and distorted breaches eloquent of the booty that 
had been forced through them. No portraits so 
blasting as his have ever been created by another ; 
no other hand has so devastatingly shattered the 
conventional contours of faces to reshape them into 
the awful images of their own hidden potentialities. 






•SHARAKU : THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA DAXJURO (yEBIZO) AS THE DAIMYO 
KO NO MORONAO IN THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN. 

Size 14 X 10. Sliver background. Signed TosJiiiisai Sliaraku ga. 



I'late 43. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 311 

To call Sharaku a realist is a silly, untruthful 
attempt to muffle in words forces that one does not 
understand. He was hardly more a realist than 
Kiyonaga. He saw in the spectacle before him 
certain elements of beauty and terror ; he selected 
and moulded them into his cunningly devised 
designs ; and the result was as much a creation of 
the visionary mind — a true idealism — as the pictures 
of the fairy-tale-telling Harunobu. It is no mere 
realism, but an insidious dissection and a mordant 
reconstruction, that is so striking in these works- 
The most savage efforts of modern caricature are 
child's play beside Sharaku's disintegrating analysis 
and his satanic reassembling of features. He does 
to the face and its concealed passions what Michael 
Angelo's anatomical figure does to the nerves and 
muscles — revealing appallingly the secrets of structure 
and the machinery of power. 

Yet, in spite of all the distortions and exaggera- 
tions and displacements, Sharaku's satyrical faces 
live. They have an unnatural and monstrous life — 
like the life of Gothic gargoyles and fabulous animals, 
whose parts are brought together into an incredible 
yet organic creation. Looking upon them, one 
realizes that for Sharaku beauty meant not sweetness 
or grace, but vitality — the clench and rending of the 
earthquake forces of life. He sought no harmonies 
of sentiment like those of Harunobu ; he plunged 
wholly into a maelstrom of powers whose magnificent 
surge and flow was to him the sole end and the sole 
consolation. 

He drew no courtesans, no scenes from the daily 



312 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

life of the people, no festivals, no tea-house gardens 
by the river ; but with a baleful concentration he, the 
proud master of the esoteric No drama, kept his 
eyes fixed unswervingly upon the pathetic mimes of 
the vulgar stage — outcasts, common lumps strutting 
for an hour of glory in gorgeous robes and heroic 
roles before a gaping populace. How one longs for 
one more work from Sharaku's hands — a portrait of 
himself, seated in the stalls, watching the play at its 
height ! One can almost imagine the peering eyes, 
the tight lips, the hidden hands. . . . 

So far I have spoken chiefly of the large heads of 
Sharaku. But it must not be forgotten that he pro- 
duced a number of designs in hoso-ye form that are 
the very flower of his work. Kurth places certain of 
these early in Sharaku's career ; he is, perhaps, wrong 
in this, for many of those which he thus dates give 
evidence of an art so mature and masterful that they 
must be at least contemporaneous with the Ronin 
Series. Such are the print of Arashi Ryuzo as an 
aged noble in robe of black with violet girdle, and 
the print of Segawa Kikusabro in robe of olive and 
purple holding an open fan. In the finest of these 
hoso-ye the dramatic force of the composition is so 
subtle that the element of caricature takes a subordi- 
nate place. A lyric mood pervades them. It is 
impossible to contemplate these figures without a 
sense, not merely of the irony and contempt which 
they sometimes embody, but also of the tragic heights 
on which they move. Lofty conflicts, desperate 
destinies, immense strainings toward desired goals, 
immense despairs before impassable barriers — these 




SHAKARU : THE ACTOR KOSAGAWA TSUNEYO AS A WOMAN IN THE 
DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN. 

Silver background. Size 14 x 10. Signed Toshiusai Sharaku ga. Ainsworth Collection. 



Plafe 44. 



313 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 315 

are some of the emotions that confront us here. The 
echo of the tragedy of the Greeks is around them ; 
their gestures seem the shadows of titanic cataclysms. 
Kiyonaga gave us the gods ; Sharaku gives us those 
who fought against the gods. If it were my fortune 
to choose, out of the tens of thousands of prints that 
I have seen, one print which could alone be saved 
from some impending universal destruction, I am 
not sure whether I would take Harunobu's flawless 
" Flute Player," or Kiyonaga's serene " Terrace by 
the Sea," or that terrible print of Sharaku's, illus- 
trated in both Kurth and the catalogue of the 
exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, in which 
the orange-robed figure of Nakayama Tomisabro 
stalks by with an intensity of passion that makes 
one's flesh creep — a vibrancy of line, colour, and 
emotion that seems the apogee of beauty and terror. 

The hoso-ye prints have, upon the whole, more 
poise and serenity than the busts ; and they will 
perhaps be judged — in a hundred years, when the 
excitement of the discovery of Sharaku is over — to 
be among his greatest works. When they occur in 
triptychs, as probably all were originally designed to 
do, they constitute more harmonious and dramatic 
units than any of Shunsho's actor-triptychs. The 
finest, and latest in order of production, are generally 
those without background ; in these, isolated and 
sublime against an empty universe of yellow tint, 
rise the supreme evocations of Sharaku's genius. 

Great distinction of composition marks all of 
Sharaku's work. Both the hoso-ye and the large 
bust-portraits are drawn with classic simplicity of 
15 



316 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

lines and masses. Nothing short of certain of the 
Primitives can approach them. Every superfluous 
ornament is omitted ; as in Plate 43, each line is 
cut down to its meagrest possible limit. But the 
expressiveness of the drawing is unsurpassable ; 
and the aesthetic effect of the direct composition 
grows with every repeated sight. These strange 
heads against the dark glimmering backgrounds 
seem Titans rooted in the void ; they loom upon 
one's vision enormously; they are overwhelming 
with the spiritual greatness of their creator. In 
spite of all the disturbing unquietness of their 
conflicts, they are charged with a monumental 
equilibrium of design, sealed with an exalted 
peace of conception, poised as for eternity with the 
repose of measureless space and time around them. 
At first sight, one would imagine these portraits to 
be impossibly restless things to live with ; but greater 
familiarity proves them to be like the Sibyls of the 
Sistine Chapel — vast and enduring figures, whose 
large passion does not obliterate the fundamental 
tranquillity of their conception. 

The colour which Sharaku employs is of a unique 
quality : sombre, with lurid lights ; heavy and opaque ; 
nightmare colours, leashed into miraculous and in- 
credible harmony ; things of infernal and dusky 
splendour ; " tragic colours," Kurth calls them. The 
dark mica backgrounds, which Sharaku is said, with- 
out much proof, to have invented, heighten to a 
remarkable degree his colour effects. Words and 
reproductions are alike powerless to convey any 
sense of them ; they hold in store an impressive 



a 

i 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 317 

sensation for him who has not yet seen them. With 
them Sharaku takes first rank as a colourist. 

Toward the end of his brief career, his portraits 
became almost too terrible in their savage and tragic 
irony. In the large double-portraits Sharaku tears 
the mask of humanity aside and shows the very 
beast. Yet to call even these most extreme of his 
productions caricatures is to obscure a subtle spiritual 
essence by a crude word. They are exactly as comic 
as the ravings of Lear, as mirth-provoking as the 
laments of Shylock. They are not the light mock- 
ing of a scoffer or a comedian, but the appalling 
and tortured sneer of a man whose vision of men 
is coloured by his desire for the gods. 

"Because he did not represent reality, but on 
the contrary painted unnatural figures, the public 
became hostile toward him." ..." His figures were 
too realistic." ..." He was a bungler in art." . . . 
From these conflicting criticisms, found in various 
Japanese authorities, we may gather with what com- 
prehension the public of that day accepted the final 
work of the great painter ; and we may conjecture 
what neglect and hatred forced him into a never- 
broken retirement. 

Dr. Kurth is of the opinion that, after the year 
1795, Sharaku still continued to produce secretly a 
few prints under the assumed name of Kabukido 
Yenkyo, and attempted under this disguise to win 
back the popularity of his prime. This is an alluring 
but somewhat fantastic theory, which neither the 
documentary nor the internal evidence of Yenkyo's 
work adequately supports. Other authorities believe 



318 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Yenkyo to have been an independent artist who was 
a pupil of Sharaku. His work strangely resembles 
that of Kunimasa I. At the present time it cannot 
be said that the question is wholly settled ; but it 
would be rash to accept Kurth's theory at its face 
value. 

In conclusion, let us grant that Sharaku is not for 
every one. One cannot quarrel with a person who 
says, " I understand Sharaku ; I see the measureless 
depths of his tragic irony, the unique splendour of 
his colour, the perfect mastery of his composition. 
But I do not like him. I prefer Kiyonaga, just as 
I prefer the stately beauty of Keats to the troubled 
profundity of Blake." Such a position is compre- 
hensible and impregnable. But he who finds 
Sharaku merely grotesque or absurd or repellent 
should return to the portraits for further study ; 
he has not yet reached the immortal heart of 
Sharaku's work, and he is missing a memorable 
experience. 

Exact comparisons are profitless ; but most 
students of Japanese prints have at certain times 
turned from the work of Sharaku with the deep 
conviction that this man was the greatest genius 
of them all. 

Sharaku's output was not large, and his work is 
now of the utmost rarity. The Parisian collectors 
long ago recognized Sharaku's greatness, and at a 
time when Fenollosa was proclaiming Sharaku as 
an " arch-purveyor of vulgarities," and Strange was 
grudgingly describing him in seven lines as an artist 
"of great power but little grace," the collectors of 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 319 

Paris had already acquired such Sharaku treasures 
as are now a lavish and deserved reward for their 
foresight. Perhaps the only collection of Sharaku 
prints that can rival those of Paris is the notable 
Spaulding Collection of Boston, which takes high 
rank. 

Choki. 

A Silver Print. 

The sky, a plate of darkened steel, 
Weighs on the far rim of the sea. 
Save where the lifted glooms reveal 
The last edge of the sun burned free. 
Blood-red, it drops departingly. 

And in the nightmare oi the hour, 
Against the terrible sea and sky, 
A woman's figure — a strange flower — 
Lingers. Her wearied, curious eye 
Watches the burning world go by. 

Though Choki is probably not to be counted as 
one of the few supremely great artists of the Ukioye 
School, his fame has been steadily increasing during 
the last twenty years ; and whereas he once held an 
insignificant place in the esteem of amateurs, he has 
of late been regarded with an interest and admiration 
that at times seem almost more than his deserts. 
Mr. Strange calls him the most graceful of all the 
figure-designers of his time, and Kurth does not 
hesitate to deal with him as "mit einem Riesen- 
groszen." I note in Kurth a tendency to exalt an 
artist because of his proficiency in technical pro- 
cesses, to an extent that I cannot assent to ; 
Choki was superb, but hardly Titanic. It would 
be difficult to characterize him more justly than 



320 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



in the words of M. Koechlin, " Le plus curieux des 
petits maitres." This description certainly does not 
err on the side of over-enthusiasm ; perhaps these 
are rather lukewarm words to apply to a grace so 
exquisite, a precision so sharp, and a spiritual appeal 
so strangely alluring as that of Choki. 

Absolutely nothing is known of Yeishosai Choki's 
life ; it is believed that he was a pupil of Sekiyen, 
who also taught Utamaro. The 
Japanese authorities are inexplic- 
ably silent about him. Internal 
evidence, however, tells us that 
his work lies betv/een the years 
1785 and 1805. His earliest de- 
signs are strongly after the manner 
of Kiyonaga, whose feminine types 
he at first adopted almost literally. 
|-^ These he modified somewhat a 

1^ little later when he came under 

the influence of Yeishi, whose 
slender and delicate figures led 
him away from the robust ones 
of Kiyonaga. One of Choki's 
pillar-prints, illustrated in Plate 45, 
marks an interesting transition stage. The face 
and figure seem at first sight almost purely of the 
Kiyonaga variety, but on closer examination dif- 
ferences appear ; and most striking of all is the fact 
that the colour-scheme is that peculiar combination 
of yellow, grey, violet, blue, and black which was 
distinctive of some of Yeishi's finest work. The 
influence of Sharaku on Choki was at some time 





r 



CHOKI : COURTESAN AND 
ATTENDANT. 

Size 26 X 4|. 
Signed Choki ga. 



SHUNMAN : TWO LADIES 
UNDER A MAPLE-TREE. 



Size 24 X 5. 
Signed Kitbo Shiiiuuan ga. 



Plate 45. 



321 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 323 

very strong, though the precise date is almost 
impossible to determine. So great was Choki's 
admiration for this master that later, when he had 
arrived at his own distinctive manner, he produced 
a pillar-print of a girl holding a fan on which 
appears Sharaku's fam.ous design of " The Man 
with the Pipe." But Choki followed no one else 
as badly as he did Sharaku ; though he appears 
to have learned things that were of great value to 
him later, his immediate imitations of the great 
ironist reduced the superb effects of the latter to 
the level of caricatures and dissipated the effect of 
concentrated force which marks his work. Utamaro 
proved a more congenial influence ; and in Choki's 
earlier prints there are many traces of the grace, 
though not of the versatility, of that artist. 

i\bout 1790 there came out of this series of imita- 
tions a curious blended type, which finally became 
Choki's distinctive own. This type is a composite 
of Kiyonaga, Yeishi, and Sharaku, but ultimately 
unlike any of them in its effect. The lower part of 
the face is prominent ; the neck is elongated and 
wonderfully delicate ; about the eyes there is a 
narrowing that is unusual. These figures of Choki's 
are distinguished by a precision in drawing so sharp 
as to be almost an affectation, and by a grace half of 
whose unique fascination is produced by some strange- 
ness of gesture, some keenness of characterization, or 
some unusual angle of vision. Few examples of 
Choki's work in this manner survive ; but they are 
sufficient to lift his reputation from that of a copyist 
to that of a notable creator of women's portraits. 



324 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Woman was his great theme. " Er hat ihrem 
Liebreiz das Hohelied der Japanischen Malerei 
uberhaupt gesungen," says Kurth, in a burst of 
enthusiasm for these subtle designs. His most 
striking works in this manner, and perhaps the 
greatest of all his works, are undoubtedly his half- 
length figures on mica or silver backgrounds. Of 
the fascination of these rare prints it is impossible to 
gain any idea from a reproduction. They rise into 
the world of the miraculous ; they are pure incanta- 
tions. Such sheets as the famous " Fireflies," or the 
two women smoking by the river, or the falling-snow 
scene, or the sunset by the sea, have a beauty as 
unique as it is haunting. The colours, dull in tone, 
produce against the metallic sheen of the silver back- 
grounds unparalleled arrangements that are positively 
disturbing in their super-refinement. 

Choki's blue and silver and red tones seem to pass 
over into a region where dwell things inexpressible 
by ordinary pigments. The most sophisticated 
amateur shivers before some of these colour- 
harmonies. Choki's characteristic prints are never 
restful, but always exciting and vibrant ; they are 
dominated by some hidden instability of equilibrium 
that reacts on one's nerves like a drug. Their 
beauty has a certain madness in it, or at least a note 
of strain and disquietude. Thus in the end, for all 
his imitative efforts, Choki stands, as did Sharaku, in 
solitary isolation and impenetrable mystery. 

For reasons unknown to us, Choki late in his 
activity changed his signature to Shiko and produced 
under this name a small number of prints regarding 



1 



tA ■i 






CHOKI : A COURTESAN 
AND HER LOVER. 



Size 24 X 4^. 
Signed Shiko, liitsn. 



CHOKI : A GEISHA AND HER 
SERVANT CARRYING LUTE- 
BOX. 

Size 24 X 5. 
Signed Shiko, hitsii. 



Plate 46. 



325 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 327 



f 



the quality of which opinions differ. They are all in 
the manner of Utamaro's later style, and so little 
resemble the work signed " Choki " that one has to 
use a distinct effort to restrain one's incredulity, in 
the face of pretty clear evidence that the two names 
were used by a single artist. Easily first among 
these prints are a few splendid pillar-prints ; one of 
these, the two singers with the black box, illustrated 
in Plate 46, seems to me almost ________ 

the finest pillar-print post-dating 
1795 that I have ever seen. Of 
this form Choki was a consummate 
master. But M. Koechlin regards 
these Shiko prints as mere imita- 
tions of Utamaro's period of de- 
cadence, and rejoices in the fact 
that they are so rare. Mr. Arthur 
Morrison, on the other hand, who 
points out correctly that Shiko is 
Choki's late, not his early name 
(a matter on which most writers 
have inexplicably gone astray) 
feels that the Shiko sheets are, 
in the best instances, of more elegance and distinction 
than anything produced under the Choki signature. 
I should hardly like to agree with either view, but am 
content to put the Shiko pillar-prints and the Choki 
silver-prints side by side, and regard them as the 
supreme examples of the double talent of this 
puzzling genius. 

All of Choki's work is of great rarity ; that 
signed Shiko is possibly even rarer than that 



328 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

signed Choki. Rarest and most highly treasured 
of all are his silver-prints ; the ordinary collector 
will probably never have an opportunity to obtain 
one. 

Nagahide II and Ichirakusai Nagamatsu 
(Chosho) may be mentioned as followers of Choki. 
The fact that we do not know of more disciples 
of so brilliant a designer is another one of the 
inexplicable things that surround him. 



TOYOKUNI. 

The Pupil of Toyokuni, 

I walk the crowded Yedo streets, 
And everywhere one question greets 
My passing, as the strollers say — 
"How goes the Master's work to-day? 
We saw him sketching hard last night 
At Ryogoku, where the bright 
Trails of the rockets lit the air. 
You should have seen the ladies there ! 
All the most famous of the town 
In gorgeous robes walked up and down 
The long bridge-span, well-knowing he 
Was there to draw them gorgeously. 
I'm sure he'll give us something fine — 
Dark splendid figures, lights ashine, 
A great procession of our best 
And costliest Oiran, with the West 
Burning behind them. When it's done, 
Pray, of the copies, save me one." 

Yes, I am pupil to the great. 
How well he bears his famous state ! 
With what superbness he fulfills 
The multitude's delighted wills, 
Giving them, at their eager call, 
Each play and feast and festival 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 329 

Drawn with a rich magnificence : 

And they come flocking with their pence 

To buy his sheets whose supple power 

Captures the plaudits of the hour — 

Till even Utamaro's eyes 

Turn, kindled with swift jealousies. 

Strange ! that before this crowded shrine 
One voice is lacking, and that mine — 
I, learner in his lordly house — 
I, on whose cold, unwilling brows 
The lights of his strong glory burn, 
Blinding my heart that needs must yearn 
Far from the measure of his state — 
I, liegeman to another fate. 
Would that some blindness came on me 
That I might cease one hour to see, 
For all his high, ambitious will, 
His is a peasant's nature still. . . . 
What utter madness that my thought 
Weighs him — I who am less than naught ! 
Where he walks boldly, there I creep. 
Where his assured long brush-strokes sweep 
Unhesitant, there I falter, strain 
With agony — perhaps in vain — 
For some more subtly curving line. 
Some musical poising of design 
That shall at last, at last express 
My frailer glimpse of loveliness. 
And yet, for all his facile art, 
I hug my impotence to my heart. 
For there are things his marching mind 
In steady labours day by day 
With all its sight shall never find, 
With all its craft can never say. 
There are lights along the dusky street 
That his bold eyes have never caught ; 
There are tones more luminous, more sweet 
Than any that his hopes have sought. 
There are torturing lines that curve and fall 
Like dying echoes musical, 
Or twine and lave and bend and roll, 
In labyrinths to lure my soul. 



330 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

His ladies sumptuous and rare 

Move princess-like in proud design 

Of glowing loveliness : but where 

His bannered pomps and pageants shine, 

I feel a stiller, rarer peace, 

A cadence breathless, slender, lone. 

And where his facile brush-strokes cease 

Begins the realm that is my own. 

I wander lonely by fields and streams. 
I lie in wait for lingering dreams 
That brood, a tender-lighted haze 
Down the wide space of ending days — 
A secret thrill that hovering flies 
Round some tall form, some wistful eyes, 
Some thin branch where the Spring is green — 
A whisper heard, a light half-seen 
By lonely wanderers abroad 
In crowded streets or solitude 
Of hills — to haunt with dim unrest 
The empty chambers of the breast. 

Perhaps some day a heart shall come. 
Like me half-blind, like me half-dumb, 
Like me contentless with the clear 
Sunlighted beauties men hold dear. 
Perhaps he will more greatly prize 
My faltered whispers from afar 
Than all the Master's pageantries 
And confident pomp and press and jar. 
Yet, well or ill, how shall I change 
The measure doled, the nature given? 
Mine is the thirst for far and strange 
Echoes of a forgotten heaven. 
I listen for the ghosts of sound ; 
Remote, I watch life's eager stream ; 
Through wastes afar, through gulfs profound, 
I, Toyohiro, seek my dream. 

Utagawa Toyokuni was born in 1768, and early 
began his apprenticeship as a pupil of Toyoharu. 
From this master he learned the rules of European 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 331 



perspective — a device which he soon abandoned for 
the true Japanese convention. He may have studied 
under Shunyei for a short time. Though he was 
later to become a fertile producer of actor-prints, he 
inaugurated his work with the figures of women. 
His first works imitate the type of face and figure 
made famous by Shunsho's and Shigemasa's book, 
" Mirror of the Beautiful Women 
of the Yoshiwara." Before 1790 
he gave up this type for one 
copied from Kiyonaga, who was 
at this time at the height of his 
fame. But Toyokuni was no such 
draughtsman as Kiyonaga, and his 
figures in this manner are generally 
poorly drawn and awkward. At 
this time he frequently adopted 
colour -schemes from Shunman. 
After Kiyonaga's retirement Toyo- 
kuni began to use the delicate type 
made popular by the rising genius 
of Choki ; but after a short interval 
he went over to Utamaro, who was 
then coming into supreme mastery. 

Up to 1 79 1, therefore (according to Friedrich 
Succo, " Toyokuni und Seine Zeit," Mlinchen, 191 3), 
Toyokuni was exclusively a painter of women. But 
when in the early nineties the colossal Sharaku 
brought out his revolutionary actor-portraits, Toyo- 
kuni abandoned his old field and adopted, to the 
extent that a smaller man could, the themes and 
eventually the manner of this great genius. At first 




TOYOKUNI. 



332 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Sharaku appears to have been an awakener rather 
than a guide to Toyokuni ; for we find that it was to 
Shunsho's style that Toyokuni first looked for a 
model. But when Sharaku's great series of the 
Ronin bust-portraits appeared, Toyokuni at once 
responded to them as the strongest influence of his 
whole life and produced a number of similar portraits 
in a manner that captures all the eccentricities but 
little of the strength or insight of Sharaku. A more 
successful series, also definitely inspired by Sharaku's 
Ronin busts, was a set of full-length Ronin figures 
which Toyokuni then brought out. These tall 
monumental designs, with striking masses of black 
and deep colour against grey or mica backgrounds, 
are perhaps the finest actors in the whole long list 
of this artist's work. Though they never surpass 
Shunsho's or Sharaku's supreme creations, they are 
powerful conceptions, and constitute some basis for 
the claim of Toyokuni's admirers that he was the 
third-greatest of the actor-painters. 

When, about 1794, Sharaku's career came to a 
sudden and tragic close, Toyokuni turned back from 
actors to women. Once more he followed Utamaro 
in the selection of his type, and with greater success 
than heretofore. To this period belongs the really 
splendid triptych, " The Journey of Narahira," repre- 
senting a man on horseback and six attendants, 
admirably spaced, at the foot of Fuji. In this period 
also must be placed the series of pillar-prints of 
unusual width and shortness, very richly printed, 
representing courtesans and actors together. The 
print of this series which shows Ichikawa Komazo 




TuYuKUXI ; LADIES AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS IX THE WIND. 
Right-hand sheet of a triptych. Size 15 x 10. Signed Toyokuni ga. Metzgar Collectic 

Plate 47. 



333 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 335 

pushing back a reed blind to surprise a half-clothed 
courtesan is a very fine work. These, and other 
productions of this time, justify us in calling this 
decade the best period of Toyokuni's activity. 

But before 1800 Toyokuni had followed Utamaro 
in that artist's adoption of the thin necks, enormous 
coiffures, and distorted bodies which not even Utamaro 
was always able to handle beautifully. Toyokuni's 
success was far inferior. The over-ripeness of the 
type required all Utamaro's subtlety to make it 
attractive or significant; and Toyokuni was by no 
means subtle. Therefore it was no loss when he 
returned to actor-prints shortly thereafter. One 
print of this, his second actor-period — the savage 
portrait of Matsumoto Koshiro, reproduced by 
Succo — is notable and fine. But on the whole his 
second period shows Toyokuni as only slightly 
more original than in the Sharaku period. In his 
portraits of women at this time he sometimes leaned 
a little toward the Yeishi type, with Yeishi's stiffness 
but without his distinction. Many books, from these 
as well as from other years, bear witness to his 
industry ; he was a veritable geyser of prints of 
every sort. 

In 1804 Toyokuni was obscurely involved in trouble 
with the authorities over some of his historical prints. 
This was the time when Utamaro also suffered at 
their hands. In 1806 Utamaro died ; and Toyokuni, 
who had so long leaned on the greater painter for his 
stimulus and inspiration, went to pieces like a house 
of cards. Without a rival to emulate, he was nothing ; 
and we see him, a tragic figure — indisputably the 



336 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

most famous master then living, who had survived 
the great days when he had competed with Kiyo- 
naga, Yeishi, and Utamaro for popular favour — now 
alone in a glory which he could not sustain — a master 
bereft of those conditions which had once enabled 
him to produce almost-masterpieces. 

From this time on his work steadily deteriorated. 
The raw and over-complicated colours of his designs 
of women made a melancholy contrast to the " Nara- 
hira" triptych. He abandoned woman-portraiture 
about 1 8 10. His actors continued — a mere outworn 
formula — awkward, angular creations, with senselessly 
crossed eyes, twisted necks, wry mouths — the veriest 
parody on those devices which had once been em- 
ployed by Sharaku for a sublime end. Toyokuni 
died in 1825, a man who had outlived himself. 

Toyokuni's production had been enormous. The 
contemporaneous popularity indicated by this is hard 
to understand unless we remember his frequent shift- 
ings of style and realize that at every moment he was 
ready to throw off his old manner and adopt that of 
whatever artist most strongly appealed to the taste of 
the hour. He was the most imitative of all artists. 
What the mob wanted he gave them unreservedly, 
losing his own integrity thereby. 

Toyokuni seems to have been without real indivi- 
duality or individual view-point. He was devoid of 
either illusions or insight ; and the true artist must 
have the one or the other passionately. He drew his 
women without enthusiasm and without tenderness. 
He conceived his actors without the white-heat of 
real artistic creation. There is something rasping 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 337 

about the greater part of his work ; it seems full 
of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is rhetoric, 
not the profound and tragic poetry of Sharaku, nor 
the subtle and decadent lyric strain of Utamaro. 
Rarely did he make an authentic attempt to capture 
the beauty or wonder or terror of life as he himself 
saw it. It is always the vision of other men that he 
is reporting, not his own. He had no vision. 

So long as he could attach himself to some produc- 
tive master, catching that master's feeling and style to 
a certain extent, he produced creditable works. But 
when the support was withdrawn he seemed power- 
less to take another step along that road. Kiyonaga's 
retirement, Sharaku's downfall, Utamaro's death — 
each in turn cut short Toyokuni's prosperous career 
in the footsteps of these masters. When left to himself 
he had only one thing to revert to — the typical Toyo- 
kuni actor at its worst, a thing of common ugliness. 

No fame has tarnished more than his with the pass- 
ing of time. As Sharaku's has brightened, his has 
dimmed. Once he was esteemed the greatest living 
print-designer ; now I find that many students feel a 
sense of surprise when occasionally, out of the thou- 
sands of Toyokuni's prints, one appears that is really 
distinguished. 

It must, however, be admitted that at certain times 
Toyokuni's native brilliancy enabled him to create 
prints that are not surpassed by any of his contem- 
poraries. He did more poor work than any other 
artist of his time ; but such triptychs as the " Ryogoku 
Fireworks," in the Kiyonaga manner, the " Bath 
House," in which shadows appear on the wall, the 
16 



338 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

" Fan Shop," and the " Ladies and Cherry-blossoms 
in the Wind," are beyond criticism. 

The best Toyokuni prints are very rare ; the 
common ones are to be found plentifully in every 
print-shop. His few finest triptychs, such as the 
" Narahira," or the " Ladies and Cherry-blossoms 
in the Wind," of which one sheet appears in Plate 47, 
are among the collector's important treasures. 

The beginner should be warned that there were, in 
all, at least five men who at various times bore the 
name Toyokuni. No one of the successors of the 
first Toyokuni ever produced work comparable with 
the finest work of Toyokuni I ; but it is a matter 
of great difficulty, not yet by any means wholly 
clear, to distinguish between the late inferior work of 
Toyokuni I and the work of several of the succeed- 
ing Toyokunis. One simple indication may be of 
service to the inexperienced collector : If the Toyo- 
kuni signature is in a red oval or cartouch, it is not by 
the first master. This statement cannot, however, be 
reversed, for the later Toyokunis often signed without 
the cartouch. 

TOYOHIRO. 

A Group of Ladies. 

O careless passer — O look deep ! 
These forms from near the sea of sleep 
Come hither ; on each forehead gleams 
The phosphorescent spray of dreams. 
They have sailed in from lonely seas 
Cloaked in a haze of mysteries ; 
And hither by a lord are led 
Who snared them, pale himself with dread, 
Upon the very shores of sleep. 
O careless passer-by, look deep ! 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 339 



Utagawa Toyohiro, sometimes also called Ichiriusai, 
was born in 1773 ; he was a brother, fellow-student, 
and probably pupil of Toyokuni. It is well known 
that about 1800 these two artists collaborated to 
some extent. Toyohiro's own chief work — land- 
scapes, book-illustrations not unlike Hokusai's, and 
figures of women — was done be- 
tween 1795 and 1820; he died in 
the year 1828. 

Fate has been unkind to him 
in associating him with a man 
tremendously more productive and 
incomparably more popular in his 
own day than himself. Even to 
the present time, the reputation of 
Toyokuni still overshadows that of 
his brother. But the close student 
of Toyohiro's work will probably 
come to the conclusion that this 
present difference in fame is due 
less to difference in merit than 
to the fact that Toyokuni was 
enormously prolific, while Toyo- 
hiro's work was scanty. The con- 
temporaneous popularity may be ascribed to the ability 
of Toyokuni to shift and veer with every change in the 
public taste, while Toyohiro was unable or unwilling 
to move with these fluctuating winds. It is reported 
that a serious breach occurred between the brothers 
because of Toyohiro's refusal to produce actor-prints 
as the popular taste demanded. His work is, how- 
ever, coming to be recognized as of a quality at least 




TOYOHIRQ. 



340 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

equal to his brother's, and in some respects finer and 
more truly the expression of a rare sense of beauty. 

We may conjecture that Toyohiro inherited two 
things from his first teacher Toyoharu. One was a 
leaning toward landscape drawing. The other was 
a certain distinction and shy aloofness that marked 
the older master. 

All Toyohiro's work has an aristocratic touch, a 
fine subtlety of curve and colour, that contrast 
markedly with the frequently blaring compositions 
of Toyokuni. He seldom drew actors or courtesans ; 
most of his figures are ladies of birth and breeding. 
The beautiful spots of black which are important 
elements in the majority of his compositions are 
handled with a keen sense of contrast that not even 
Kiyonaga's surpassed. His brushwork is firm and 
delicate, but not so sparkling with vitality as that of 
some of his predecessors. His colours are soft, his 
figures wonderfully graceful ; the impression he 
produces upon one is that of a subtle and beauty- 
hungry spirit, detached from the mob by a refine- 
ment beyond their comprehension, driven on by a 
consuming passion, devoted to the quest of a per- 
fection he was able to project but not to realize. 

In style, he draws considerably upon Toyokuni's 
early Utamaro manner ; but in spirit he is nearer 
to Yeishi and Utamaro himself, both of whom must 
have influenced him somewhat. Not even the work 
of Yeishi is so saturated with the wistfulness for 
beauty, the sense of vanishing loveliness, the home- 
sickness for regions of otherwhere. One of his 
triptychs, the '* Daimyo's Kite Party," reproduced 



FOURTH PEEIOD: THE DECADENCE 343 

in Plate 48, so embodies these qualities that it is 
worthy of special attention. 

In a landscape of green hills, where a circle of low 
slopes encloses a space of level ground, stands, on 
the rising edge of that natural amphitheatre, a group 
of noble ladies and children in the soft brightness 
of festal attire — richly decorated pink, black, white, 
translucent heliotrope. Below and behind them 
boys are manoeuvring a kite, and older men direct 
briskly. The ladies for whom this simple and 
charming pastime is arranged do not seem wholly 
intent upon it. Their tall slender figures move as 
if in abstraction, an isolated group in the foreground. 
One grey cherry-tree, with gnarled branches etched 
against a clear sky, stands in their midst, bare except 
for the pink of earliest blossoms ; and the pale green 
of the more distant encircling hills is here and there 
touched with the same luminous flowers. 

Across this landscape the slender figures move 
in slow procession. Their robes sway about them 
slowly. These sweeping draperies, which Harunobu 
would have charged with peace and solemnity, are 
here touched with the tension of more unquiet curves, 
restless, troubled with some element of torture in 
their beauty. These are the lines of the branch and 
of the wave, bent by the strain of hidden and con- 
flicting forces. The clear festive brightness of pink 
cherry-blossoms with the light of spring shining 
through them serves but to accentuate the faint 
melancholy of the trailing figures on whom lies a 
wistfulness that no spring can satisfy. They linger, 
exquisitely aimless ; beautiful, and weary for a yet- 



344 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

unattained beauty ; happy, but grave with the shadow 
of fleeting happiness ; sad, though reconciled by the 
knowledge that beauty is half sadness. They have 
walked with expectant steps to the edge of the 
world ; and now they pace, delicately wondering, not 
far from the abyss where there is nothing. Autumn 
will always be to them cold and unkindred ; yet 
in the flush of the spring their thoughts will turn 
toward death and autumn. One cannot imagine 
them wholly joyous. They seem haunted by a 
nostalgia for remote delights, unearthly music, secret 
and dimly remembered gardens. Strange, late, exotic 
flowers are these, whom a pensiveness not known 
to simpler and sturdier natures disturbs with futile 
dreams. 

A similar feeling is so often repeated in Toyohiro's 
work that I venture to regard it as the keynote of 
his genius. 

Toyohiro's landscapes are without notable beauty. 
He had a habit of cutting across the middle of his 
picture with wide streaks of white mist — an un- 
pleasant device adopted to produce the effect of 
distance. He is, however, an historical link of great 
importance between his master, Toyoharu, and his 
pupil, Hiroshige, the greatest of all landscape 
painters. As a conduit of landscape painting at a 
time when the Ukioye School was little given to this 
as a separate study, Toyohiro's work in this field 
may well engage our attention ; but one suspects 
that it is the fame of his great pupil's landscapes 
rather than the intrinsic merit of his own that has 
given his their prominence. 



FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 345 

Toyohiro produced a few pillar-prints of birds 
which have great distinction ; an almost classic 
feeling marks some of them. 

Toyohiro's prints are not numerous ; Toyokuni's 
outnumber his twenty to one. His pillar-prints are 
very rare ; his triptychs are generally notable. It is 
necessary to add, however, that poor impressions of 
his work, printed in poor colours, are more common 
than any other kind. 



VII 

THE FIFTH PERIOD: 
THE DOWNFALL 

FROM THE 

DEATH OF UTAMARO 

TO THE 

DEATH OF HIROSHIGE 

(1806-1858) 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 

From the Death of Utamaro to the Death of Hiroshige 
( 1 806-1 858) 

When Utamaro died, in 1806, the great days ot the 
figure-print were ended. There were to be no more 
Harunobus or Kiyonagas or Sharakus — only a horde 
of little men whose work retained few traces of the 
earlier greatness. And our serious interest in the 
art as a whole must end here. Were it not for 
the superb renaissance of landscape which this 
period includes, side by side with the decay of 
figure-designing, it would be my choice to mark 
this date as the end of our history. 

The causes of the degradation of prints in this 
period appear to have been of several natures. For 
one, the accidents that regulate the birth of geniuses 
operated unkindly, and few artists of first-rate talent 
came to take the places of the dead masters. Further, 
the colour-print had gone somewhat out of fashion 
among its original public, and the people who now 
bought were chiefly of a lower and more ignorant 
class than the purchasers of Kiyonaga's day. To 
the less exacting but eager demands of this class 



350 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

the publishers catered with coarser designs, cruder 
colours, and more careless printing. Now, in literal 
truth, the print-designer was the artisan ; and amid 
the vast flood of commonplace productions of the 
time it is difficult to search out those few works 
that have a claim to beauty. 

It is probable that a general loss in refinement of 
taste marked the epoch and was reflected in the 
prints. The uncouth flaring designs of the textiles, 
the gross overladen coiflures, the excess of decoration 
that lay like a blight over all the instruments of life 
at this time, naturally had their influence upon the 
standards of the artist. 

Furthermore, the movement toward realism here 
reached its climax. Dominated by Hokusai's earlier 
work, the artists abandoned the old traditional 
devotion to stylistic restraint and went madly in 
chase of a distorted kind of literal truth that had 
no relation to beauty. Men who were too impotent 
to create visions nobly and too dull to observe 
reality keenly attempted to conceal their double 
weakness by a double evasion — spoiling what claim 
their work had to idealistic imagination by touches 
of crude realism, and ruining it as realism by the 
most grotesque aberrations of fancy. In the sphere 
of erotic prints this was characteristically and repel- 
lently manifest. Certain examples of this type, 
produced in the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century, surpass in grossness even the most studied 
of European specimens. In landscape alone has 
the period something of the highest charm to 
offer us. 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 351 

The School of Toyokuni 

As we have seen, Toyokuni's career ended any- 
thing but brilliantly. Unfortunately his numerous 
followers appear to have been influenced more by his 
final work than by the production of his better days. 
I do not regard it as profitable to wade, as some 
writers have done, through this wearying period of 
degenerate production and tabulate every fact 
obtainable about every insignificant artist with the 
same care that one would bestow upon Kiyonaga. 
I shall therefore be content to note down only the 
most salient features of this epoch of disintegration. 

Following Toyokuni, at least four men used 
the name made famous by him. The first of 
these, Toyokuni II, was that same Toyokuni 
Gosotei of whom we shall treat under the heading 
of Landscape. His use of the name Toyokuni 
appears to have been between the years 1825 and 

1835. 

Toyokuni III was better known as Kunisada I; 
for though he was born in 1786 and lived until 1865, 
he did not adopt the name of Toyokuni until about 
1844. He added to our confusion by the fact that 
he signed himself "Toyokuni" or "Toyokuni II," 
never recognizing the claims of the real Toyokuni II 
to the name. Most frequently Kunisada's Toyokuni 
signature is enclosed in a long red cartouch, a device 
never used by Toyokuni I. This very undistinguished 
artist was one of the most prolific producers of the 
school. All that meaningless complexity of design, 
coarseness of colour, and carelessness of printing 



352 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



which we associate with the final ruin of the art of 

colour-prints finds full expression in him. Every 

tourist returning from Japan brings 

back dozens of crudely coloured 

prints by him or by the members 

^i^\ of his school, under the misap- 

rjTf prehension that these are the 

^r\ famous and valuable Japanese 

prints of which he has vaguely 

^^ heard. The only figure work of 

^^ Kunisada's that I am able to 

l*f recall with any pleasure is his 

^w really notable Memorial Portrait of 

jf^^ Hiroshige, a dignified and impres- 

^ sive print. The few landscapes 

he produced are of much greater 

KUNisADA. beauty than his figures, and one is 

inclined to wish that he had done 

more in this field and less in the other. 

TOYOKUNI IV was also known as Kunisada II 
and as Kunimasa II. Born 1833, he died 1880. 
His prints, largely executed in cheap analine colours, 
set one's teeth on edge with some of the most 
shrieking discords that I have ever encountered. 
There exists an unfortunate collector who proudly 
brought back from Japan one hundred and nineteen 
triptychs by this artist. 

TOYOKUNI V was also called Kunisada III and 
Kunimasa III. His work was worthless. 

Kunimasa I (1772-18 10) was an exceedingly 
able pupil of Toyokuni, who was influenced by 
Sharaku. Some of his work is very fine ; he stands 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 353 

out as one of the few notable designers of this 
group. 

KuNINAGA, who died in 1804, was a rare pupil of 
Toyokuni. His work is pleasant, though it has no 
great distinction ; but it is far more attractive than 
the work of most of these men, for the reason that he 
had the good luck to die before the period of general 
disintegration began. The Spaulding Collection 
contains a fine diptych by him, in black and several 
shades of yellow, in the early style of Toyokuni. 

KUNIMITSU was also an early pupil of Toyokuni. 
His work is agreeable but not notable. 

From the vast number of minor followers of the 
Toyokuni tradition, I select the following as the 
most common : KUNIYASU I, KUNIYASU H, 
TOYOKIYO, TOYOHIRO H, KUNIFUSA, KUNIHIRO, 
KUNITANE, KUNIKATSU, KUNIHISA, KUNI- 
TERA, KUNITERU, KUNIKANE I, KUNIKANE H, 
KUNITAKA, KUNIMUNE, KUNIHIKO, KUNITOKI, 
KUNIYUKI, KUNITSUMA, KUNIKIYO, KUNIHANA, 
KUNITOHISA, KUNIMICHI I, KUNIMICHI II, KUNIAO 
I,KUNIAO n, KUNITORA, KUNITAKI, KUNITSUGI I, 
KUNITSUGI n, KUNITADA, KUNINOBU H, KUNIAKI, 
KlYOKUNI, KUNIMARU I, KUNIMARU H, KUNI- 

CHiKA, Chikashige, Yoshitaki, Yoshitsuru, 
yoshiume, yoshitsuna, yoshisato, yoshifuji, 
Yoshikage, Yoshikuni, Yoshichika, Yoshikazu, 
YosHiHARU, Shunbeni, Yoshitomi, Yoshifusa, 

SUGAKUDO, SENCHO, TOMINOBU. 

Chikamaro is said to be identical with KIOSAI, 
whose work sometimes resembles Hokusai's. Born 
in 183 1, he died very late in the century. He was 



354 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



a vigorous designer — perhaps the best of all thai 
later men. His crow pictures are famous. 

KiKUGAWA Yeizan, a prolific and undistinguished! 
designer of the first quarter of the century, was a latei 
rival and imitator of Utamaro. He eventually sank! 
even to imitating Kunisada. The flowing draperie^ 
of some of his prints of women 
are at first sight attractive to eye^ 
not accustomed to the finest worka 
in this field ; but the completa 
banality of Yeizan's powers beJ 
comes manifest on more prolonged 
acquaintance, and any trace o^ 
charm disappears. 




Followers of the Torii 
School. 
Jr^ Here may be mentioned those 

^\ artists in whom the once-great 

Torii School came to its inglorious 
end. 

KlYOMlNE, the fifth head of the 
school, sometimes signed himself 
Kiyomitsu ; his work is easily 
distinguishable from that of the 
He studied under Kiyonaga, and 
later adopted a style somewhat like that of 
Toyokuni. His work is graceful, but not dis- 
tinguished. Prints by him are rather rare. He 
died in 1868. 

KlYOFUSA, who died as late as 1892, was the 
sixth Torii. He also called himself Kiyomitsu HI. 



KIKUGAWA YEIZAN. 



first Kiyomitsu. 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 355 

and Kiyosada II. Other late members of this school 
were: KlYOMOTO II, KlYOYASU, KlYOTADA II, 

KiYOTADA III, Kiyosada I. 

The Osaka School. 

In the first half of the nineteenth century there 
grew into importance in the city of Osaka a group of 
designers who constituted an exception to the state- 
ment made earlier in this book — that the art of 
colour-printing was exclusively a Yedo art. Hokusai 
is known to have visited Osaka in 1818; and 
possibly it was his influence that encouraged the 
movement. At any rate, a large number of the 
Osaka group were pupils of Hokusai or followers 
of his manner. 

The school thus entered into real activity at a date 
when the art was far gone in its decline; and its 
designs produced no arresting effect. Most of the 
work of these men is crude. Yet when we look at 
the products of the second quarter of the century in 
Yedo, we may very possibly feel that the Osaka out- 
put was at least no worse. It included chiefly 
theatrical portraits, all done with a peculiar hardness 
of line and cold brilliance of colour, and printed as a 
rule very skilfully. These by no means approach 
the works of Shunsho, Shunyei, and Sharaku, after 
which they were obviously patterned, nor even the 
works of Toyokuni ; but the hard treatment so 
characteristic of them gives a certain dignity of effect 
which Kunisada's flowing and formless earthquakes 
of draperies generally lack. 

The school does not call for elaborate treatment ; 
17 



356 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

the following men may be mentioned as among the 
best known : HOKUSHU, HaSEGAWA SadanOBU, 

Sadakage, Kagetoshi, Sadafusa, Sadatora, 
Sadamasa, Sadamasu, Sadahiro, Sadayoshi, 

ASHIKUNI, ASHIYUKI, HiROSADA, SHUNSHI, 
HORAI SHUNSHO II, HOKUMIO, HaNZAN, 
YOSHIIKU, and Ranko. Others will be mentioned 
later as pupils of Hokusai or as landscape-painters. 

The Renaissance of Landscape. 

Like a beautiful island in the midst of a sea of 
wrecks, the landscape prints of the first half of the 
nineteenth century stand apart from the general 
debasement of print-designing. The great days of 
the figure-print were over ; but now, into an art filled 
with the second-rate followers of Utamaro and 
Toyokuni, came the fresh and brilliant landscape 
genius of Hokusai and Hiroshige. Their work did 
not share in the general decline ; it must be regarded 
as a new shoot sent up by the roots of a tree 
whose main trunk had already fallen into irreparable 
decay. 

Landscape-prints were not a new thing ; Utamaro 
and Toyohiro had already produced fine work of 
this nature, and interesting examples are to be 
found as we look backward through the work of 
Toyoharu, Shigemasa, Kiyonobu, and Masanobu — 
back, in fact, almost to the beginning of the art. 
But these earlier landscapes were, upon the whole, 
of subordinate importance ; beside the figure-prints 
of the earlier masters, they seem crude and rudi- 
mentary. Previous to Hokusai and Hiroshige, they 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 357 

were chiefly of topographical, not of aesthetic, in- 
tention and interest. In the nineteenth century 
their importance became paramount. 

" Japanese colour-prints devoted to landscape," 
writes Mr. Strange, "form a class apart in the art 
of the world. There is nothing else like them ; 
neither in the highly idealistic and often lovely 
abstractions of the aristocratic painters of Japan, 
nor in the more imitative and, it must be said, 
more meaningless transcripts from nature, of 
European artists. The colour-print, as executed by 
the best men of the Japanese popular school, 
occupies an intermediate place ; perhaps thus 
furnishing a reason why we Westerners so easily 
appreciate it. Its imagery and sentiment are ele- 
mentary in the eyes of the native critics of Japanese 
high art. Its attempts at realism are in his eyes 
mere evidence of vulgarity. On the other hand 
these very qualities endear it to us. We can under- 
stand the first, without the long training in 
symbolism which is the essential of refinement to 
an educated man of the extreme East. And the 
other characteristic forms, in our eyes, a leading 
recommendation. In short, the landscapes of artists 
such as Hiroshige approach more nearly to our 
own standards, and are thus more easily acceptable 
to us than anything else in the pictorial arts 
of China and Japan ; while they have all the 
fascination of a strange technique, a bold and 
undaunted convention, and a superb excellence of 
composition not too remote in principle from our 
own." 



358 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 



HOKUSAI. 

Because thou wast marvellous of eye, magic of fancy, lithe of hand, 
Because thou didst play o'er many a gulf where common mortals 

dizzy stand, 
Because no thing in earth or sky escaped the pryings of thine art, 
I call thee, who wast master of all, the master with the monkey's 

heart. 

Where in the street the drunkards roll — where in the ring the 
wrestlers sway. 
Where rustics pound the harvest rice, or fishers sail, or abbots pray. 
In rocky gorge, or lowland field, or winter heights of mountain air, 
Wherever man or beast or bird or flower finds place — yea, every- 
where 
Thou standest, as I fancy, rapt in the live play of mass and line, 
Curiously noting every poise ; and in that ugly head of thine 
Storing it with unsated fierce passion for life's minutest part. 
Some day to use infallibly — O master with the monkey's heart ! 

WTiere Kanazawa's thundering shores behold the mounded waters 

rave. 
And Fuji looms above the plain, and the plain slopes to meet the 

wave. 
There didst thou from the trembling sands unleash thy soul in 

sudden flight 
To soar above the whirling waste with awe and wonder and delight. 
Thou sawest the giant tumult poured ; each slope and chasm of 

cloven brine 
Called thee ; and from the scattered rout one vision did thy sight 

divine. 
One heaven-affronting whelming wave in which all common waves 

have part — 
A billow from the wrath of God — O monkey with a master's heart! 

What mind shall span thee ? Who shall praise or blame thy 

world-embracing sight 
Whose harvest was each rock and wraith, each form of loathing or 

of light ? 
Though we should puzzle all our days, we could not know thee as 

thou art, 
Nor where the seer of vision ends, nor where begins the monkey's 

heart. 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 359 



Until rather recently Hokusai was, for European 
spectators, as isolated and commanding a figure in 
the domain of Japanese art as Fuji is in the 
Japanese landscape. He was regarded as the one 
culminating and all-inclusive genius among Japanese 
painters and print-designers. At precisely the same 
time, he was esteemed by Japanese connoisseurs to 
be a prolific but vulgar artisan, whose mere crafts- 
man-dexterity could not compen- 
sate for his lack of lofty feeling 
and poetic vision. 

It is not necessary to quarrel 
with either of these views. Almost 
every student of Hokusai passes 
through three stages. At first, 
he is overwhelmed by Hokusai's 
technical skill and imaginative 
brilliance, and regards him as un- 
rivalled. Deeper experience brings 
him the conviction that much of hokusai. 

this magical dexterity is some- 
what in the nature of a juggler's antics in a vaude- 
ville, and that his first burst of enthusiasm was 
not wholly warranted. Then, finally, he comes to 
perceive that there are qualities in Hokusai's work 
which, in spite of so much that is vulgar, justly 
entitle this artist to his high fame. 

One classes Hokusai as a landscape-artist ; yet his 
work was by no means confined to landscape. He 
pictured, as M. Thdodore Duret wrote, "everything 
to be seen by the eye or invented by the brain of 
a Japanese." His " Mangwa," that vast twelve- 




360 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

volume collection of drawings, includes sketches of 
a whole world of varied scenes and objects and 
people. The bulk of his production was colossal — 
dozens of designs a day throughout most of his 
eighty-nine years ! 

His figures are drawn with a swift and sure 
realism that is generally tinged with humour and 
often with vulgarity. His vigorous power of ob- 
serving and recording faces and attitudes is almost 
unparalleled. Fantasy, whimsical conceits, irony, 
grotesqueness animate them ; always they have super- 
abundant life. The play of his brush is miraculous. 

His landscapes are his greatest works. In the best 
of these he shakes off his trifling mood, and, as in 
Plate 51, creates designs whose stark brilliance and 
originality of composition is unsurpassed. And at 
least once, in the noblest of his prints — the rare and 
monumental series of " The Imagery of the Poets" — 
he achieves a high seriousness that will always be 
impressive. 

Hokusai was born in 1760, the son of a mirror- 
maker. He lived to the age of eighty-nine years — a 
long life, crowded with privation that wins our sym- 
pathy, and with incessant devotion to his art. When 
in his seventies, he said : " Ever since the age of six 
years I have felt the impulse to draw the forms of 
objects. Up to the age of fifty years I made a 
great number of drawings ; but I am dissatisfied with 
everything that I created prior to my seventieth 
year. At the age of seventy-three I, for the first 
time, began to grasp the true forms and nature of 
birds, fishes, and plants. It follows that at the age 




361 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 363 

of eighty I shall have made still greater progress ; 
at ninety I shall be able to create all objects ; at 
a hundred I shall certainly have attained to still 
higher, unimaginable power ; and when I finally reach 
my one hundred and tenth year, every line, every 
dot will live with an intense life. I invite those 
who are going to live as long as I to convince 
themselves whether I shall keep my word. Written 
at the age of seventy-five years by me, formerly 
Hokusai, now called the Old Man Mad with Painting." 
His dying words were : " If the gods had given me 
only ten years more — only five years more — I could 
have become a really great painter ! " 

Hokusai's education began as an apprentice to 
a wood-engraver, a valuable experience for his later 
career. At the age of eighteen he entered the studio 
of Shunsho and adopted the name of Shunro. Under 
this name he produced actors in the orthodox Shunsho 
manner and melodramatic illustrations for the popular 
romances of the day. About 1786 a quarrel with 
Shunsho, due to the pupil's insubordination, led to 
Hokusai's expulsion, and he thereupon launched out 
for himself, to begin his long life of poverty and 
madly enthusiastic labour. 

His work may be divided roughly into three 
periods. In the first he followed the traditions of 
Shunsho, Shunyei, Utamaro, and others of his con- 
temporaries, with great skill but no special originality. 
His countless book-illustrations of this time were all 
conceived with lively fancy and vigour ; but perhaps 
the finest works of this, his conventional period, are 
the very wide prints and surimono in which, against a 



364 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

delicately suggested landscape, move extraordinarily 
graceful women's figures not unlike those of Utamaro. 
Already he was a master of drawing ; but he kept 
incessantly at his studies under many teachers, learn- 
ing, among other things, European perspective from 
Shiba Kokan. His work was done in this and the 
following periods under a dozen different names, of 
which Sori, Kako, Shunro, and Taito are the most 
important. 

In 1 812 began his second or realistic period, with 
the publication of the first book of his fifteen-volume 
series of drawings, the " Mangwa." In this epoch 
he turned from the styles of his predecessors and 
launched into a hitherto unknown journalistic realism. 
With a lively sense of the comic and the burlesque, 
and an insatiable interest in the homeliest details of 
life, he threw overboard all formal stylistic quality and 
set sail on a riotous voyage of naturalistic discovery. 

The " Mangwa," which may serve as a type of his 
whole production in this realistic period, is praised 
sometimes as his greatest work. In it we shall find 
not only his most striking tours-de-force as a draughts- 
man but also the key to his weakness. All existence 
thrilled him as it did Walt Whitman ; and each 
object on which he turned his eyes stirred him with 
the desire to record it in his pages. Day after day 
he worked like a madman, throwing off his sketches 
of man, beast, and phantom, of rock, river, and sea, 
in endless profusion and with inexhaustible ingenuity. 
And though we grant our admiration to the enthu- 
siasm, sharp vision, and clever draughtsmanship of 
these sheets, we may still find in this undiscrimina- 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 365 

ting passion a quality incompatible with the highest 
reaches of artistic greatness. There is something 
vulgar, childish, under-developed in the mental 
attitude revealed ; it seems a coarse greed for all 
experience, unlighted by the power to judge and 
reject, or by any consciousness of the ranks and 
hierarchies of beauty. It is a vast and dull en- 
thusiasm ; a celebration of the victory of the will 
to live over the will to perfect ; a triumph of mean- 
ingless sensation over the just judgments of the 
discriminating mind. All shapes seem equally in- 
teresting and beautiful to it — all smells equally sweet. 
As Pater writes of Balzac — a man who was in many 
ways not unlike Hokusai — this artist " had an excess 
of curiosity — curiosity not duly tempered with the 
desire of beauty." 

I can never look through the " Mangwa " without 
a sense of distressing chaos and a longing for the 
purer beauties which more finely organized artists 
have evoked from the heterogeneous welter of the 
seen world. But just this welter is at this time 
Hokusai's theme. " A debauch of sketches," Fenol- 
losa calls it. In this work Hokusai stands beside 
Harunobu exactly as Whitman stands beside Keats 
— a more interesting mind but a far less perfect 
artist. 

" Hokusai is incomparable," writes the commentator 
who furnished the introduction to one of his books. 
" While all his predecessors were more or less slaves 
to classical tradition and inherited rules, he alone 
emancipated his brush from all such fetters, and 
drew according to the dictates of his heart." True : 



366 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

and this was his curse. No man has ever lived with 
heart profound and subtle enough for such emanci- 
pation. Nor have the supreme artists ever attempted 
it. In Hokusai's case this upstart-abandoning of all 
tradition was an error from which he was able later 
to retrieve himself; but so great was the impression 
produced by his vulgarities on the mob that even 
to this day popular Japanese art has remained under 
the cloud of it. 

Hokusai himself did recover. In his third period, 
the stylistic one, the greatness that was in him tran- 
scended his petty interest in the trivial idiosyncrasies 
of seen things, and he created those visions which 
constitute his lasting glory. Between 1823 and 1830 
he issued those series, " The Thirty-six Views of 
Fuji," "The Bridges," "The Waterfalls," "The 
Loocho Islands," and "The Imagery of the Poets," 
in which we hail him as master. No longer the 
dupe of realism, he brings us his dreams. 

"The Thirty- six Views of Fuji" stands as one of 
his two greatest works. Here, in the forty-six plates 
that constitute the main series and the supplement, 
the same motive is treated recurrently, but with 
infinite variety. He depicts Fuji, the sacred moun- 
tain, in storm and calm, in mist and sunlight — 
sometimes dominating the colossally empty frame of 
the design, sometimes receding to a mere speck in 
the distance ; and around the noble peak beat the 
waves of the sea and the foam of the clouds and 
the restless stream of human life, in a great epic 
of infinite diversity and profound unity. 

In this series his trivial realism is forgotten, or 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 369 

employed only in just subordination. Throwing 
aside his earlier vulgar absorption in the minutiae of 
existence, he concentrated his vision on one concep- 
tion, one chosen impression, so sharply and personally 
seen that he evoked a new style in landscape. Much 
it borrowed from tradition ; but the flavour was 
Hokusai's. These designs are, primarily, magnificent 
studies in linear composition. The great sweep of 
Fuji's slope is related to the rhythm of every other 
line in the picture. And the line-dominance is pre- 
served by the use of the simplest and most original 
of colour-schemes — green, blue, and brown — broadly 
laid on in large masses. A highly decorative quality 
and great boldness are the result. 

The justly famous " Wave " belongs to this series. 
Here for the first time in our survey of the prints do 
we find elemental fury depicted with grandiose 
eloquence. In the majestic composition of the 
" Great Tree " (Plate 50) the calm sublimity of nature 
and the infinitely minute, vermin-like aspect of man 
is superbly expressed. In the " Tama River " (Plate 
49) Hokusai gives us a sweep of wave and shore, 
mist and mountain, that his great predecessors, the 
landscape-painters of Sung days in China, might 
have envied. In all these prints he relates man and 
nature to each other with a vividness and dramatic 
power foreign to his great rival Hiroshige. 

The world which Hokusai pictures in this series 
is not the real world, but Hokusai's highly personal 
translation of it into terms of superb imagination. 
A thousand memory-stored impressions combine to 
make the sharp composite of each design ; and it is, 



370 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

to use the term in its technical Platonic sense, the 
Idea of the scene that he flashes before us. Herein 
lies the abnormal vitality that emanates from these 
pictures. " We feel," says Mr. Binyon, " that the 
world holds more wonders than we dreamed of, 
sources of power and exhilaration which Hokusai 
has revealed, and which we may go and discover 
for ourselves." 

Hokusai's other great work was a series of ten 
upright prints of very large size, "The Imagery of 
the Poets." It returns in feeling, though not in 
technique, to the style of the classic masters ; and 
remains, because of its high seriousness of mood 
and its sweeping magnificence of composition, at the 
very top of all Hokusai's work. Of all his thousands 
of designs, the one that is supreme is probably the 
print of this set which depicts the famous Chinese 
poet Li Peh beside the chasm and cascade of Luh. 

Even his latest years were crowded with continued 
efforts. In 1849, at the age of eighty-nine years, 
he died. 

Fine and well-preserved Hokusai prints are not 
common. His "Poets" and really brilliant impres- 
sions of his "Thirty-six Fuji" are very rare, 
particularly the former. Poor impressions of the 
latter are numerous. Practically all of Hokusai's 
most famous prints have been reproduced, and the 
collector must be on his guard against these worthless 
sheets. One of the best-known judges in Europe 
was recently deceived by a fraudulent set of the 
" Poets." Hokusai's fine bird-and-flower designs 
and his large early surimono are rare ; as also are 




HOKUSAI : THE MONKEY BRIDGE — TWILIGHT AND 

RISING MOON. 

Size 14I X 6|. Signed Hohisai ga. 



Plate 51. 



371 



i 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 373 

good copies of his famous books, the " Mangwa " and 
the " One Hundred Views of Fuji." Numerous late 
blurred impressions of these are extant, and should 
be avoided. His other books are not uncommon. 

Pupils and Followers of Hokusai. 

Hokusai had many pupils ; no one of them 
equalled the landscape work of the master, though 
several of them produced designs of great interest. 
As a body they were distinguished for their match- 
less work in the field of surimono. 

The surimono was a type of print not sold in the 
market ; it was made upon special order of private 
individuals for use as a festival-greeting, an invita- 
tion, a congratulatory memorial, or an announcement. 
Its size was generally small, about five or six inches 
square ; printed on very soft thick paper, it displayed 
the utmost complexity of the technique of colour- 
printing. The number of blocks was lavishly 
multiplied ; the most subtle gradations of colour 
were contrived ; and the effect was heightened by 
every variety of gauffrage, gold, silver, and bronze 
powders, and mother-of-pearl dust. Yet in spite of 
all this effort, the surimono is, in the opinion of many 
collectors, not as a rule very important as a work of 
art. In the ordinary surimono the medium employed 
has outstripped the motive expressed, and what 
should have been the means has become the sole 
end. Nevertheless they are unrivalled as specimens 
of workmanship and printing, and the best of them 
are highly treasured. Some of Hokusai's pupils 
excelled their master in this form. 



374 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 




Gakutei, who also signed himself Gogaku, pro- 
duced perhaps the finest surimono of any that we 
know. His work in this field was 
voluminous and distinguished. He 
also issued a few exceedingly 
^L decorative landscapes. 

■T- HOKKEI stands beside Gakutei 

1*1 as a brilliant producer of surimono, 

closely in the manner of Hokusai. 
Some of his landscapes, printed in 
blue and green, have a curious 
charm and individuality. 

HOKUJU produced landscapes in 
a strange semi-European style, with 
angular mountains and unusual 
cloud effects. 

GAKUTEI. ,, ^ - 

Yanagawa Shigenobu, the 
son-in-law of Hokusai, copied his master closely; 
some of his work has great charm. 
According to some authorities he is 
the same person to whom Hokusai 
gave his discarded name, Katsu- 
SHIKA Taito. Certain prints 
signed Taito are still somewhat 
in doubt, notably the well-known 
leaping fish and the moon-and- 
bridge scene, both from the " Hari- 
maze Han " ; Mr. Happer has 
brought forward evidence that these 
are by Taito, but many authori- 
ties still hold to the idea that 
they are the work of Hokusai under his early name^ 




i 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 375 

Among the numberless Hokusai pupils may be 
named : HoKUBA, HOKUGA, NiHO, Shigeyama, 
GOKEI, Shinsai, Isai, Hokuun, Hokuyei, 
HOKUTEI, Hokutai, Hokusui, Taigaku, Renshi, 
JuzAN, Yasumichi, Bokusen, Keiju, Ryusai, 
Gangakusai, Keiri, Hokuyo. 

Hiroshige. 

As merchantmen from Eastern Isles 
In caravels of purple came, 
With freight that alien heart beguiles, 
Incense and cloths of woven flame. 

So down the gulfs of elder time 
Thy glorious pinions bear to me 
Mad treasure from the unknown clime 
Of worlds beyond the Western Sea. 

Now in my bay the sails are furled. 
But I, who guess their native skies, 
Henceforth must roam that golden world, 
Where strange winds whisper and strange scents rise. — 

Immortal Fuji's snowy crown — 
Wide seas with sky of amethyst — 
A street where torrents thunder down — 
Branches that toss against the mist — 
Smooth hills and hill-girt plains where run 
Streams through the rice-fields steeped in heat — 
Pines gnarled above a sunken sun — 
Cold heights where cloud and mountain meet. 

Now visions enter to my breast 
That from thy passion won their birth, 
When like a bride in radiance dressed 
Before thee glowed the summers of earth. 

What magic gave thee to behold 
This fairness, secret from our sight, 
Where morning walks the world in gold, 
Or seas turn grey with coming night ? 



376 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

For thee, as when the South Winds blow, 
Lands burst to bloom. On every shore 
Where beauty dwells thou didst bestow 
A perilous mortal beauty more. 

Twilight and morn on Biwa's breast — 
Harima's sands and lordly pines — 
White Hira-mountain's winter crest — 
The low red dusk round Yedo shrines — 
The moon beneath the Monkey Bridge — 
The Poisoned River's brooding gloom — 
Rose-dawn on some Tokaido ridge — 
Pale water-worlds of lotus bloom. 

Our toiling race is with the day 
Wearied, and restless with the night, — 
Unpausing, on its tombward way, 
For fear or wonder or delight, — 

Unwatchful, mid the sombre things 
That mesh us in a vain employ, 
For peace that half of heaven brings, 
For beauty that is wholly joy. 

Lover for whom the world was wide ! 
Down lighted pathways thou didst move. 
Where hills and seas and cities hide 
So much for weary men to love. — 

The mist of cherry-trees in spring — 
Ships sleeping on some bright lagoon — 
A swallow's dusky sweeping wing — 
Steep Ishiyama's autumn moon — 
The changing marvels of faint rain — 
The foam that hides the torrent's stream — 
The eagle o'er the snowy plain — 
Sea- twilights haunted as a dream. 

Speaking, thou laidst thy brush aside — 
" On a long journey I repair — 
Regions beyond the Western Tide — 
To view the wonderful landscapes there." 




n<*^^ 



i 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 379 



Yet, at Adzuma, loosed from all 
Thy mortal bonds, made free to roam, 
Methinks thou couldst not break the thral 
That held thee to thy human home. 

Surely no heaven could harbour thee, 
Nor other world of keener bliss, 
Who didst with such deep constancy 
Worship the loveliness of this. 

Moon-flooded throngs in Yedo streets — 
Dawn-quickened travellers on their road — 
Lone ocean-fronting hill retreats — 
An Oiran's perilous-sweet abode — 
A mighty Buddha by the sea 
Where all the wondering pilgrims meet — 
Immortal Fuji, changelessly 
Watching the world around her feet. 

Hiroshige takes rank by unanimous consent as 
the foremost landscape artist produced ,by the 
Ukioye School. His prints, known 
to every one, have been more 
greatly admired in Western lands 
than the prints of any other artist 
except Hokusai. Hokusai's main 
concern was with the fundamental 
architecture of landscape ; he out- 
lined the structure of mountains, 
rocks, rivers, waves, and bridges 
with a hard and brilliant sharp- 
ness ; but Hiroshige, less rigid in 
his treatment, seems chiefly in- 
tent upon the more delicate and 
transitory appearances of cloud 
and mist, rain and snow, sunrise and dusk, that 
give to a landscape at each moment so much of 
18 




HIROSHIGE. 



380 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

its specific character. These atmospheric effects of 
his are justly famous. Few landscape painters of 
any race have succeeded in rendering so finely 
the mood of a scene. No one can be insensible to 
the delicate peace and sweetness of a twilight like 
that of Plate 52, or the vigorous life of wide sea spaces 
in Plate 53, or the heavy hush of nightfall over the 
snow-covered village of Plate 54. Even more impres- 
sive are the luminous and solemn dusk on the Sumida 
River (Plate 55) and the mystery of the print called 
"The Bow-Moon" which appears as the frontispiece. 

The Bow- Moon. 

Where the torrent leaps and falls, 
And the hanging cliffs look down, 
Cloven grey and ruddy walls 
Each with ragged forest-crown, 

There across the chasmed deep 
Spans a gossamer bridge on high ; 
And below, from gulfs of sleep, 
Mounts the Bow-Moon up the sky. 

Blue dusk, thickening whence she rose, 
Her abysses veils ; above 
Moves she into twilight's close 
As faint strains of music move. 

On the eastern slope her feet, 
White, in tranced ecstasy. 
Climb, a ghost of heaven so sweet 
That the spent day cannot die. 

Walled by crags on either side 
Glimmers forth her figure wan, 
Straying like some lonely bride 
Through the halls of Kubla Khan. 

Pilgrim of the riven deep ! 
Whereso'er thy lover lie, 
Sleep to him is troubled sleep 
While his Bow- Moon haunts the sky. 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 381 

Hiroshige's great strength lay in his genius for 
strikingly effective composition, and in the skill with 
which he adapted his designs to the limitations of 
the colour-print technique. He reduced the pictured 
scene to a few simple elements of a highly decorative 
character, and managed to make them so symbolic 
and suggestive that we do not miss the multitude 
of details which he purposely omits. A strongly 
dominant unity of impression is the result. His 
finest designs convey a sense of personal feeling that 
even the Barbizon artists at their best do not surpass. 
With the limited resources of the wood block, he 
achieved subtle renderings of distance, aerial per- 
spective, atmosphere, and light ; and the poetic 
quality of his designs has endeared him to generations 
of print-lovers in a way more personal than is the 
case with any other artist. His work will stand 
beside the " Liber Studiorum " of Turner ; it remains 
perhaps the most complete and magnificent land- 
scape record that any land has ever had. 

One curious characteristic of these prints at once 
strikes the Western eye — the use of a band of dark 
colour along the top of the picture, which is shaded 
gradually down into the clear white of the lower sky. 
This convention serves several purposes. It provides 
a mass to balance the colour at the bottom of the 
design, bringing the whole sheet into the picture and 
not leaving the upper portion as a mere margin above 
the landscape proper. It also creates depth and 
atmosphere, setting the brightest part of the design, 
the middle, back into the frame created by the upper 
and lower masses. And finally, it renders with 



382 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

peculiar accuracy the effect of gradual vanishing 
which we actually experience as we look at a 
landscape : in our visual field, the sky does 
not end in a sharp line, but blurs and darkens 
at the upper edge of the space that our eyes 
survey. 

Hiroshige's bird and flower designs are works of 
extraordinary freshness and loveliness ; a unique 
and idyllic charm emanates from them, and as 
compositions they take high rank (Plate 56). 



Alilt against the emerald sky, 
A tiny violet songster swings, 
Clutching a branch, in ecstasy 
Of light and height and skiey things. 
Singing, he swings ; and swinging, I 
For once am showered with joy of wings. 

Keen and pure, of a magic power, 
Thy rapture stirs what was never stirred. 
Thou hast brought to earth a cloudland dower, 
The joy of the small sweet singing bird. 
All time is richer for thy hour 
Of delicate music, gravely heard. 

Does the iris droop beneath the heat? 
Its weariness finds voice in thee. 
Does the pheasant run with snow -clogged feet ? 
Winter is theirs who thy vision see. 
Is summer's glow to the swallow sweet? 
Thou hast captured its summer eternally. 

Each thou hast wrought as a lyric note 
Pure with one mood of sky and trees 
And flowers, and tiny lives that float 
Or dart or poise in world of these. 
The painter's hand, the thrush's throat — 
Which masters best these melodies ? 




383 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 385 

Gusty rain through the tree-tops blown 
And a bird that scuds where the grey gusts hiss — 
Sapphire wings and a golden crown 
Flung skyward in unconscious bliss — 
No rare enchanted bird has known 
As thou hast known the savour of this ! 

And winning it, thou hast cast aside 
Thy native bonds of mortal birth, 
Flinging the spirit-pinions wide 
Above this world of weary worth, 
To float and poise and skyward ride 
With those whose realm is not the earth — 

The peacock in his proud repose — 
Wild geese that rush across the moon — 
The little sleepy owl that knows 
The wdnd-among-the-tree-tops tune — 
The kingfisher that darts and glows 
Over the reeds of the lagoon — 

The flower-lured humming-bird that weaves 
Spirals more delicate than they — 
Sanderlings that on moonlit eves 
Over the w^ave-crest sw'oop and play — 
The crane that shores of sunset leaves 
For sunset skies of far away. 

Hiroshige was born in 1796, just as the great 
period of figure-designing was drawing to its close. 
As a youth he attempted to gain entrance to the 
studio of Toyokuni ; but the fortunate fact that there 
was no room for him forced him to enter the studio 
of the less popular but more subtly gifted Toyohiro. 
Here he studied landscape, a branch in which he was 
destined far to outstrip his master. That delicate 
genius which was Toyohiro's cannot but have pro- 
duced its effect upon the pupil ; and it pleases one to 
fancy that it is some echo of Toyohiro's inarticulate 



386 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

refinement of feeling that gains at last full expression 
in some of Hiroshige's most beautiful landscapes. 

In 1828 Toyohiro died ; and Hiroshige became 
independent. His earliest works probably antedate 
this time a little ; they consist of a few figures of 
women and actors, and two very fine horizontal 
landscape series. These were the " Toto Meisho," 
or earliest series of Yedo views, distinguished by 
curious long red clouds in each plate ; and the 
" Honcho Meisho," a group of views of the main 
island of Japan. Particularly the first of these sets 
contains work of great beauty. 

Shortly after 1830 Hiroshige found occasion to 
travel from Yedo, the northern capital, to Kyoto, the 
southern capital, along the great post-road which he 
has immortalized — the Tokaido. There resulted his 
series of horizontal plates, " The Fifty-three Stations 
of the Tokaido," completed about 1834. This remains 
his best-known and unsurpassed work. Plate S3 is 
from this series. Each picture records with unfailing 
vividness and originality some famous scene along 
the crowded national highway. For reasons unknown 
to us, Hiroshige prepared new designs for some of the 
plates after the original publication of the series ; and 
these variation- plates are of great interest to collectors. 

Of the many series that followed, only the most 
important can be named here. All are of horizontal 
shape unless otherwise designated. 

Naniwa Meisho^ ten views of Osaka — chiefly 
crowded wharf and market scenes. 

Kyoto Meisho, ten views of Kyoto ; a varied and 
delightful series containing many fine prints. 



4^T 






■Wivi I ■-,^-^ 4 .'^^^'"f^'-'w -'•"*>' 









i^fer.:ti^ 7-^ 



^1 lft>K'^- 



^ 



li"^^5f 




HIROSHIGE : THE VILLAGE OF FUJI KAWA — EVENING SNOW. 

One of the Vertical Tokaido Series. Size 13A x 9. Signed Hivoshige ga. 



Plate 54. 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 389 

Omi Hakkei, the Eight Famous Views of Lake 
Biwa ; the most poetic and possibly the greatest of 
his works (Plate 52). 

Kanazawa Hakkei^ the Eight Famous Views of 
the Inlet of Kanazawa ; distinguished by a fine 
simplicity of composition. 

Yedo Kinko Hakkei, the Eight Famous Views of 
Yedo ; a series of masterpieces, of great rarity. 

Chiushingura, sixteen scenes from the story of the 
Forty-seven Ronin ; fine dramatic compositions, with 
powerful blacks and greys predominating. 

Toto Meisho and Yedo Meisho, names under which 
more than fifty different series of Yedo views were 
issued by different publishers. These sets include 
many masterpieces. 

Nikon Minato Tsukushi, ten views of the Harbours 
of Japan. 

Toto Meisho, a series of narrow upright panels of 
Yedo ; several are very distinguished. 

Mu Tamagawa, views of the Six Tama Rivers. 

Series of Fishes. 

Kwa Cho, upright panels of birds and flowers, some 
on full-sized sheets, others very narrow ; uneven in 
quality, some being masterpieces (Plate 56). 

Fan Prints^ with landscapes or bird designs. 

In the year 1842 began the so-called Prohibition 
Period of twelve years, when the sale of actor and 
courtesan prints was forbidden. The effect of this 
was to redouble the demand for landscape prints ; 
and Hiroshige was called upon to supply it. This 
he did by issuing, among others, the following 
sets : — 



390 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Tokaido Series, published by Maruzei ; next best 
to the " Great Tokaido Series " of 1834. 

Tokaido Series, published by Yesaki ; slightly 
smaller than the " Great Series " ; when well-printed, 
which is rare, they take a very high place. 

Tokaido Series, published by Sanoki, half-plate 
size ; including many charming designs. 

Kisokaido, the Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido 
Road between Yedo and Kyoto ; a series in which 
Keisai Yeisen collaborated, producing twenty-three 
of the seventy plates. Many of the plates are 
uninteresting ; but a quarter of them are superb. 
The set was reprinted at least twice in inferior 
editions. 

In this, which we may call the Kisokaido Period of , 
Hiroshige's work, he abandoned to a certain extent 
the delicate drawing of his Great Tokaido and Yedo 
Period and employed larger unbroken colour masses, 
aiming at broader effects. 

In the fifties, Hiroshige abandoned almost entirely 
the horizontal or lateral prints of his earlier days 
and adopted the upright shape. In this form he 
produced the following series, as well as others not 
named : — 

Upright Tokaido, published by Tsutaya, 1855 ; a 
fine series when well printed, but the late editions 
were crude in colour (Plate 54). 

Views of the Sixty-nine Provinces, 1856; the rare 
first edition, which is much the finer, is distinguished 
by having five seals on the face of each plate. It 
contains a great deal of uninteresting work, but also 
ten or fifteen masterpieces. 




HIROSHIGE : THE OMMAYA EMBANKMENT, ON THE SUMIDA RIVER AT 
ASAKUSA— EVENING. 

One of the Series " The Hundred Views of Yedo." Size 13 x 9. Signed HiiosJnge ga. 

Plate 55. 

391 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 393 

Three Triptychs. — The Rapids of Avva No Naruto, 
Moonlight View of Kanazawa, and Snow Moun- 
tains on the Kiso Highway, all dated 1857, and all 
magnificent. 

Two Kakemono-ye, very large — the Monkey Bridge 
and the Snow Gorge of the Fuji River, things of 
matchless impressiveness. 

The One Hundred Views of Yedo, 1858 ; 119 plates, 
including, besides much rubbish, 25 masterpieces 
(Plate 55). 

The Thirty-six Views of Fuji^ 1859; inferior, upon 
the whole, to his earlier work. There are in existence 
very few well-printed copies. 

In the last two or three of these series it is more 
than probable that Hiroshige was assisted by his 
pupil Hiroshige H. The finest plates in all these 
later series are equal to the master's most splendid 
earlier designs ; but certain of the plates are of so 
banal a character that it is impossible to believe 
them to be from the great man's hand. Doubtless 
the distinction between the work of the two artists 
cannot always be drawn with certainty ; but as a 
general rule we may regard the work as that of 
Hiroshige H if we find the figures stiff and wooden, 
if the composition is lacking in any central unity, or 
if some large ugly object is thrust into the foreground 
with the hope of thus putting the background into 
its proper relative place. At this period less care 
was taken with the printing, and the majority of 
prints from these later series are miserable impres- 
sions that libel Hiroshige's powers. When well 
printed they can be very fine indeed ; but the 



394 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

poor copies outnumber the good a hundred to 
one. 

In the year 1858, just after the publication of the 
"One Hundred Views of Yedo," Hiroshige died. He 
did not live to see the plates for his "Thirty-six 
Views of Fuji " completed. One of the collector's 
treasures is a striking memorial portrait by Kunisada 
that was issued shortly after Hiroshige's death. The 
old man is represented with a finely shaped head, 
powerful, quiet features, and eyes as piercing as an 
eagle's. 

The number of Hiroshige's different designs runs 
into at least three or four thousand, not counting his 
illustrated books ; and there must be in existence 
a hundred thousand prints by him. His work is 
almost as plentiful as that of all the other artists 
taken together. In spite of this great abundance, 
the collector finds it difficult to-day to obtain many 
really fine prints by him. The prints usually offered 
are either in bad condition, or they are careless 
impressions produced without proper attention to the 
difficult problem of printing. The rush occasioned 
by Hiroshige's popularity naturally led to slighted 
work. Even in these poor copies a certain fascina- 
tion of design generally appears ; but it is only in 
the carefully printed copies, where the register is 
accurate and the colours are delicately graded, 
luminous, and soft, that the full beauty of Hiroshige's 
conception is made clear. Familiarity with the finer 
impressions forever spoils the attentive observer's 
taste for the crude ordinary copies. The task of the 
collector of Hiroshige's work to-day resolves itself 




HIROSHIGE : BIRD AND FLOWERS, 
Size 15 X 7. Signed Hirosliigt', Jiitsii. 



Plate 56. 



395 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 397 

into a search for these rare and precious early prints. 
The collector should lose no opportunity to compare 
different copies of the same print ; only thus can he 
educate his eyes sufficiently to appreciate the vast 
difference between fine and inferior examples. The 
difference, once grasped, is unforgettable. 

The reader who desires detailed information as to 
the long list of Hiroshige's work is referred to the 
Sale Catalogue of the Collection of John Stewart 
Happer (Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge, London), 
which is the present foundation for any real study of 
the subject. A valuable article on seal-dates by 
Major J. J. O'Brien Sexton, in the International 
Studio for May, 191 3, should also be consulted by 
the student. 

The Second Hiroshige. 

HiROSHIGE II, born 1826, was the adopted son 
of the great Hiroshige ; as we have seen, he probably 
assisted in some of the master's last work. After 
Hiroshige's death the pupil assumed the master's 
name, previous to that he had been known as 
Ichiusai Shigenobu. He is not to be confused with 
Yanagawa Shigenobu, Hokusai's pupil. 

It was once thought that Hiroshige II produced 
all the upright prints signed Hiroshige. Mr. Happer 
has once for all discredited this idea, and it is no 
longer held by any one. 

Some of the work of Hiroshige II is very good ; 
upon the accidental destruction of one of the plates of 
the " One Hundred Yedo Series," he produced a new 
design that is admirable. But he lacked originality, 



398 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

and at his best merely trod in the footsteps of his 
master. Most of his designs are flat and uninspired. 
About 1865 he fell into disgrace, and moved to 
Yokohama, where he gave up his name, and is said 
to have worked henceforth under the name of 
Hirochika II. He died in 1869. 

There was also a Hiroshige III, who died in 1896 
— a wholly commonplace and unimportant artist, 
who assumed the great name about 1865. 



in the 



Followers and Contemporaries of Hiroshige. 
Keisai Yeisen, who collaborated with Hiroshige 
Kisokaido Series," was born in 1791 and 
died in 185 1. He produced many 
figure-prints, following Yeizan, in 
the debased style of his contempo- 
^^^2 raries. His landscapes, however, 

j^fi| are his most interesting work. 

J ' '^ Many of these follow Hiroshige 

tamely ; but a few, in the older 
y,^ Kano manner, are surprising and 

\^^^ splendid designs. One of these, 

|rl^ a rare sheet depicting a bridge 

^/Nfc» and mountains in moonlight, in 
kakamono-ye form, must be re- 
garded as a masterpiece. His 
ordinary work is rather undis- 
tinguished. 
Gosotei Toyokuni produced, besides some 
unimportant actor-prints, a few fine landscapes in 
a very hard, sharp style. Chief among these is a 
" Tamagawa Series," each plate of which has a large 



FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 399 



purple panel at the top. The artist's original name 
was Toyoshige. Born in 1777, he became the 
adopted son of Toyokuni I ; after Toyokuni's death 
in 1825, he married Toyokuni's widow and called 
himself Toyokuni II, a title which Kunisada also 
claimed. 

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, born in 1798, was the 
best pupil of Toyokuni I, and an artist of more power 
than most of his contemporaries. 
His figures sometimes have dra- 
matic force of a rather fine kind ; 
but the majority of them are 
crude. His landscapes are his 
greatest claim to fame. Among 
them are some of extraordinary 
quality. They have hardly been 
sufficiently appreciated as yet by 
collectors. Kuniyoshi died in 
1861. 

Katsukawa Shunsen, a pupil 
of Shunyei, produced, besides ordi- 
nary figure-prints, a few graceful 
landscapes, chiefly in tones of green and rose. 

Hasegawa Sadanobu, who has been mentioned 
under the Osaka School, was an arrant imitator 
of Hiroshige. The Hayashi Catalogue, page 236, 
reproduces a print of his that is nothing more than 
a replica of one of Hiroshige's " Sixty-nine Province 
Series " ; and the Victoria and Albert Museum Cata- 
logue, Plate XLVI, shows a Lake Biwa print that 
copies Hiroshige's half-plate " Omi Hakkei " almost 
line for line. 




KUNIYOSHI. 



400 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Sadahide and Yoshiyuki, both Osaka artists, 
may be mentioned among the unimportant land- 
scape designers of the second half of the nineteenth 
century. 

To-day the old art of the colour-print is com- 
pletely dead. But an entirely new school has 
produced some pleasing though weak designs 
of birds, flowers, and landscapes ; and some 
attractive illustrated books have also been issued. 
The larger part of such work bears the obvious 
stamp of having been produced for the tourist and 
the foreign market, and has not a trace of that 
vigour and integrity which marked the prints of 
the great masters, whose inspiration sprang from 
and spoke to the heart of the Japanese people. 
European influence has produced a bad effect upon 
the style of these modern prints ; and the weak 
colour used tends toward prettiness rather than 
toward beauty. It is idle to hope that real vitality 
will ever return to animate this lost art. 



VIII 

THE 
COLLECTOR 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE COLLECTOR 

The field of Japanese prints is so wide, and the cost 
of different classes of prints is so various, that almost 
any taste and almost any pocket-book can find 
appropriate material for collection. A print-lover 
who is prepared to invest considerable sums of 
money, running perhaps into many thousand pounds, 
will naturally seek only important examples from 
the hands of the most renowned designers. A great 
collection must in the first place contain representa- 
tive specimens of the distinctive manners of the 
notable men in each period ; and in addition a great 
collector will wish to acquire considerable numbers of 
the supreme treasures — large-size Primitives, Haru- 
nobu pillar-prints, Kiyonaga triptychs, Utamaro 
silver-prints, Sharaku portraits, matchless impres- 
sions of Hiroshige landscapes, and the like. But 
even the modest collector who is able to expend 
only a few pounds a year can, with patience, secure 
beautiful and desirable pieces. It would be vain for 
him to imagine that he can have things of the first 
importance and rarity; but he may confidently 
expect to obtain delightful minor examples of the 

19 403 



404 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

work of even great artists, at prices that are within 
any one's reach. A Yeishi triptych will cost from 
ten to eighty pounds, but a charming small sheet by 
Yeishi can perhaps be bought for two. The pleasure 
which the collector obtains from his collection is not 
necessarily proportionate to the amount of his ex- 
penditure ; and the intelligent lover of beauty can 
derive lasting satisfaction from his carefully selected 
but inexpensive little group of Hiroshige landscapes, 
Shunsho actors, Harunobu book-illustrations, and 
similar works. 

When, however, the owner of some such sheets 
finds his ambition is growing with his interest, he 
needs to be somewhat cautious in his effort to extend 
his collection. A few charming minor prints are a 
highly desirable possession ; a large collection of 
them is not. It is easy for the lover of prints who 
has begun modestly to go on year after year with 
increasing enthusiasm, piling up numbers of cheap 
mediocre sheets ; and in the end, after having spent 
enough money to purchase ten great Kiyonagas, he 
finds himself the owner of a numerous but undis- 
tinguished collection in which there is not a single 
print of the first rank, nor a single one that will 
compel the admiration of the connoisseur. It is 
interesting to have a few prints of each type and 
period as examples, even though they are not notable 
works ; but when the collector has a moderate num- 
ber he will be wise to cease his miscellaneous buying 
and husband his resources for the occasional pur- 
chase of a masterpiece. More pleasure is to be 
found in acquiring two or three fine sheets a year 



THE COLLECTOR 405 

than from the wholesale acquisition of hundreds of 
insignificant works. 

It is, however, well to define one's limits carefully. 
If one is not able to expend from ten to a hundred 
pounds on a single print, one must dismiss from 
one's mind the idea of owning an important Kiyo- 
naga ; for that is the lowest sum at which one can 
hope to get it even with luck. If an expenditure of 
thirty to eighty pounds is impossible, one must put 
aside all idea of a Sharaku. But lesser treasures at 
lower prices are to be had ; let the collector only 
remember to take care that he gets the best things 
he can afford even though his purchases be (qw, 
rather than allow himself to be tempted into buying 
a great many of a cheaper kind. 

Remarkable opportunities to acquire fine prints at 
low prices sometimes occur, but they are rare. Certain 
prints may come up for sale only once in a collector's 
lifetime. These exceptional examples must be 
seized when they are offered ; one of the character- 
istics of a great collector is the ability to make these 
swift and often expensive decisions. He must know 
the available supply of prints and the probability of 
having another chance to get this particular sheet ; 
if he estimates such a recurrence as improbable, and 
if he esteems the print a masterpiece, he must take it 
at any price he can afford to pay. 

It is, after all is said, the masterpieces that bring 
the unwaning satisfaction. Most collectors find that 
the few supreme treasures of their collections give 
them more pleasure than all their other prints put 
together. Therefore it is well for the inexperienced 



406 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

collector to bear in mind that quality, not quantity, 
will prove his most profitable aim. For it is one of 
the delightful characteristics of collecting that the 
collector's perception is likely to grow continuously 
in fineness ; and the acquisitions of his earlier years 
may fail to satisfy his more educated taste of later 
days. This will sometimes be true of even the prints 
he once loved best ; and much more is it likely to 
apply to those which he bought merely because 
they were cheap or would increase the bulk of his 
collection. 

Discrimination is the life-blood of collecting. He 
who collects everything collects nothing ; he is the 
owner of a scrap-heap or a second-hand shop, not 
of an ordered series of specimens that illustrate 
historical or artistic ideas. The true collector would 
rather have ten selected prints than the whole mass 
of prints now in existence, if in the latter case he 
had to keep them all. Many a collection has been 
improved both in monetary value and in power to 
give pleasure by merely throwing out of it the second- 
rate things it contained. 

The collector, as a rule, sets out in the beginning 
with little knowledge and with no very definite 
notion of what he intends to collect. If he is to 
profit by his efforts or is to end by having an 
interesting group of possessions, he must before long 
define for himself the idea of a collection and the 
conception which his own is to express. He may 
decide to obtain at least one representative example 
of the work of every important artist ; or he may 
prefer to specialize, and assemble all that he can of 



THE COLLECTOR 407 

the works of a single man or a single period. A 
certain well-known collector has selected Harunobu 
and Shunsho as his special objects of interest, and 
has brought together a notable and illuminating 
series of specimens of their work. Another has 
chosen Hiroshige, and after many years of effort he 
can display to the student a fine copy of almost 
every important print by that artist. A third has 
especially sought the works of Kiyonaga ; while a 
fourth has pursued the less costly but very interesting 
aim of bringing together the sheets of Kuniyoshi. 
Another is devoted to surimono ; still another, to 
pillar-prints. The possible list of specialities is 
inexhaustible. Narrow and exclusive specialization 
is, however, uncommon among amateurs of Japanese 
prints ; and even the specialist tries to have in his 
collection a few representative examples of all 
important types. 

The inexperienced collector may find himself con- 
fused, amid so many unfamiliar names, and fail to 
separate in his mind the notable artists from those 
of secondary interest. A little study of the following 
list will perhaps be of assistance. It contains thirty- 
two names, selected from the three or four hundred 
mentioned in this book ; each one in the list is 
important, and a collection that contained even one 
fine example by each of these designers would repre- 
sent very fairly the whole scope of the art. In fact, 
the beginner will not go far astray if at the outset 
he confines his purchases to the work of the men 
here listed ; he will at least be saved from the danger 
of accumulating the productions of unnoteworthy 



408 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

designers. The names preceded by two stars are 
the ten outstanding figures whose historical and 
artistic importance makes it imperative that they 
be adequately represented in any self-respecting 
collection. Thirteen more names, preceded by one 
star, are of next conspicuousness. A collection con- 
taining a really brilliant example by each of these 
thirty-two men would cost from three hundred to 
three thousand pounds to bring together, depending 
upon the quality and importance of the prints selected. 

List of Principal Artists. 

*Buncho *Shigemasa 

*Choki *Shigenaga 

**Harunobu *Shuncho 
**Hiroshige I Shunko (Katsukawa) 

**Hokusai Shunman 

*Kiyomasu **Shunsho 

*Kiyomitsu I Shunyei 

**Kiyonaga Sukenobu 

*Kiyonobu I Toshinobu 

*Kiyonobu II Toyoharu 

* * Koriusai Toyohiro 

*Kwaigetsud6 *Toyokuni I 

Masanobu (Kitao) *Toyonobu (Ishikawa) 

**Masanobu (Okumura) **Ulamaro I 

**Moronobu *Yeishi 
**Sharaku Yeisho 

Collecting is to a certain extent creative ; for the 
picture of the art of Japanese prints that a collec- 
tion presents is almost as definitely an expression 
of a personal interpretation as is a book on the 
subject. What the collectors treasure will be 
preserved ; what they reject will doubtless perish as 
valueless. 



THE COLLECTOR 409 

One of the collector's joys is the sense that he is 
laying by immeasurable riches for posterity. Much 
remains for us still to learn from Japanese prints J 
and any sheet in a collection may prove to be the 
key that will some day unlock doors leading to 
treasure-chambers. Both historically and aestheti- 
cally, the field of Japanese prints still offers many 
undiscovered regions to the explorer. By making 
available the material for such investigations, the 
collector performs a valuable service. 

The collector's own satisfaction is not dependent 
upon the fact of possession. To seek, to desire 
ardently, is not to covet ; and the most eager 
collectors are the very ones who most thoroughly 
enjoy a beautiful print owned by another. Posses- 
sion is an accident ; but enjoyment is a form of 
genius. 

Collecting at its best is very far from mere ac- 
quisitiveness ; it may become one of the most 
humanistic of occupations, seeking to illustrate, by 
the assembling of significant reliques, the march of 
the human spirit in its quest of beauty, and the 
aspirations that were guide. To discover, preserve, 
relate, and criticize these memorials is the rational 
aim of the collector. The joy of pursuit which 
he experiences is a crude but delightful one ; and 
discovery has the triumphant sweetness of all 
successful effort. The act of restoring and pre- 
serving is a pious service to the future, and a 
delicate handicraft. To arrange examples in ac- 
curate relation to each other, and illustrate a 
conception of complex history by means of concrete 



410 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

specimens, is a constructive task that involves 
detailed knowledge and wide vision. And finally, 
the attempt to appraise the spiritual values of the 
parts and the whole may be an illuminating 
achievement, relating all this material to the general 
stream of cultural development and to the history of 
the race. 

The best way to study an art of the past is to 
collect examples of it. The collector's historical 
sense is trained and his discriminative powers are 
sharpened by his activities. As his education 
progresses, his chief interest is in works of an ever 
higher quality. He attempts always to acquire the 
best, and his knowledge of what is best is always 
widening. His is the task of judging between 
degrees of perfection. It differs not so very widely 
from that desperate search for an ideal fulfilment 
which is the curse, the inspiration, and the one 
abiding joy of the artist. 

The artist's sense of triumph in an achievement 
must be only momentary ; if he continues long to 
regard his creation as admirable, he has reached the 
stagnation of his powers and the end of his career ; 
he must ever hate to-day what he created yesterday, ' 
in order that he may be driven on to produce a still 
finer thing to-morrow. The collector, also, must 
eventually abandon his present position and move 
forward ; and, tragic to confess, perhaps his ultimate 
triumph comes on that day when the field he long 
has loved ceases to suffice his growing sense of 
beauty, and he sends his collection under the 
hammer, having mastered it and passed beyond it. 



THE COLLECTOR 411 

For every collector must in the end transcend his 
collection, unless he is to perish in it as in some 
fatal Saragossa Sea. 

A collection ig a life-estate only, and the important 
question confronts every collector as to what dis- 
position shall be made of his possessions after his 
death. My personal feeling is strongly against the 
bequest of such a collection to a public institution. 
These prints are inherently suited to private ex- 
hibition and not to public display. They must be 
kept in portfolios, not hung up in galleries, or they 
fade. They must be examined closely and at 
leisure ; the spectator should be able, seated at ease, 
to study them as he holds them in his hand. To 
walk through a gallery of prints is only a slight 
pleasure ; to sit in the library of the collector and 
inspect and discuss the same prints one by one is 
a great delight. Further, they require a degree of 
care that they would not receive in the public 
institutions. The prints in most public collections 
are repaired, mounted, and handled with a careless- 
ness that horrifies the collector. That painstaking 
skill in restoring, preserving, and mounting to the 
best advantage, which means so much for the 
ultimate effect of a print, is seldom, if ever, exercised 
except by the private owner. It may be said that 
if these treasures are in private hands, the public is 
deprived of them. This is untrue. The great body 
of the public would pass them by in a gallery, for 
this is not a spectacular or obtrusive art like 
sculpture. On the other hand, any person who gives 
evidence of a reasonable degree of interest can 



412 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

not only obtain free and willing access to all the 
private collections with which I am familiar, but he 
may have at his disposal the services of the owner 
of the collection to explain, interpret, and guide. 
There are at present scores of highly trained men, 
of such cultivation as the museums cannot afford 
to employ except in the highest positions, who are 
spending weeks and months out of every year in 
this unpaid work of serving the public ; while in 
the great public collections the ordinary inquirer is 
left adrift to find his way as best he can through 
the chaos of an improperly arranged exhibit. In 
the public collections the prints are of service or 
pleasure to almost nobody ; while in the private 
collections their service and pleasure to the owner 
and his friends is great, and the same opportunities 
are easily opened to any one who is qualified to 
profit by them. Therefore it seems better that, upon 
the death of a collector, his prints should be sold ; 
in order that, as Edmond de Goncourt directed in 
the case of his collection, those treasures which have 
been so great and so personal a delight to the 
owner may pass on into the hands of such others 
as will find in them the same satisfaction. " My 
wish is," he wrote in his will, " that my drawings, 
my prints, my curios, my books — in a word those 
things of art which have been the joy of my life — 
shall not be consigned to the cold tomb of a 
museum, and subjected to the stupid glance of the 
careless passer-by ; but I require that they shall 
all be dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer, 
so that the pleasure which the acquiring of each 



THE COLLECTOR 413 

one of them has given me shall be given again, 
in each case, to some inheritor of my own taste." 

Considerations Governing the Choice of 
Prints. 

A variety of elements must be weighed in the 
mind of the collector whenever he decides for or 
against the purchase of a particular specimen to 
add to his collection. 

The Artist. — In the first place, the authorship of 
the print is an important consideration. If the 
designer is a very great man like Kiyonaga, or a 
very rare one like Kitao Masanobu, or both com- 
bined like Shigemasa, these facts must be given 
weight. Other things being equal, a print by an 
important leader such as Utamaro is more desirable 
than one by a less original follower such as Banki. 
A Kiyonaga is a little preferable to an equally 
beautiful Shuncho, because of Kiyonaga's prime 
historical importance. The work of certain other 
men is prized by collectors because of its scarcity ; 
Chincho, for example, would be only moderately 
valued were it not for the extraordinary rarity of 
his designs. When rarity combines with greatness, 
as in the case of Kwaigetsudo, Moronobu, Buncho, 
and Sharaku, the desirability of the artist's work is 
naturally doubled in the eyes of the collector. 

A print sometimes derives an unusual interest 
from the fact that it is of a kind seldom produced 
by the particular artist who designed it. Harunobu 
and Kiyonaga actor-prints are exceptional things, 
dating from the early years of these men's careers. 



414 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

On the other hand, the silver-prints of Utamaro, 
the triptychs of Kiyonaga, and the yellow-back- 
ground prints of Yeishi are desirable for the opposite 
reason ; they represent famous and characteristic 
aspects of the work of their respective creators. 

The Quality of the Design. — The impression pro- 
duced upon the aesthetic sense of the collector is 
the most vital of all the elements that determine his 
choice. The composition, the drawing, the total 
beauty of the design, will in each individual case have 
their importance ; and upon the collector's estimate 
of these qualities will depend his desire to own 
the print. There are some dull and uninteresting 
designs by even the most gifted men — work without 
charm or life. Shunsho was a great sinner in this 
respect ; so also were Utamaro and Toyokuni. On 
the other hand, men of secondary importance pro- 
duced occasional triumphs ; a Yeisho or a Yenshi is 
sometimes found in which the most brilliant qualities 
of composition appear. Each print must be appraised 
on its own merits. 

The collector generally passes by all designs in 
which clumsiness or awkwardness is evident, and waits 
patiently for those in which the force, or grace, or 
dignity of the composition proclaims the masterpiece. 
Kiyonaga's " Terrace by the Sea," Sharaku's portrait 
of the Daimyo Moronao, Hokusai's " Red Mountain," 
and Utamaro's " Firefly Catchers " are examples of 
that unsurpassable quality which no experienced 
collector willingly lets escape him. 

The Quality of the Impression. — Different copies of 
the same print differ enormously in quality. The 



THE COLLECTOR 415 

finest design is of little avail if the work of the printer 
has not been judicious. Among early prints, before 
Utamaro, really bad impressions are not very com- 
mon, although especially fine and brilliant ones are 
hard to obtain. Later, particularly in the work of 
Hiroshige, the poor ones much outnumber the good. 
In a good impression the lines are all sharp and 
clean : where the hair meets the temples, every brush- 
stroke is clearly defined. The blacks are rich and 
heavy, not sooty or streaked. The colours must be in 
perfect register ; that is, each must exactly fill its 
allotted space without overlapping and without ragged 
edges. Prints in which these defects occur are either 
careless impressions or late impressions from worn 
blocks. Whichever be the explanation, they are not 
desirable ; the discriminating collector does not care 
to acquire any but perfectly printed sheets. All the 
skill and devotion of the printer was needed to make 
the resulting product a just interpretation of the 
conception of the designer ; in a bad impression 
the beauty of the design is ruined. 

Prior to the nineteenth century it was the usual 
practice to give each colour-block a uniform coat of 
pigment ; thus each separate colour impressed on 
the paper was completely flat and unshaded. In 
Hiroshige's time, however, the pigment was often 
partially wiped from portions of the block, so that in 
the resulting print the colour shades gradually into 
the uncoloured white of the paper. Many of 
Hiroshige's prints derive a considerable portion of 
their beauty from the subtlety of these gradations. 

There are no such things as signed artist's proofs 



416 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

among Japanese prints ; but there is a class of prints 
that corresponds to them. They are not labelled ; 
nothing distinguishes them from the ordinary copies 
except the extreme beauty of the printing. These 
rare impressions were probably early ones made 
under the eye of the artist. The sharpness of the 
lines, the harmony of the colours, and the delicacy 
of gradation in any shaded portions are of a perfection 
lacking in the ordinary copies. It took much care 
and time, and was therefore expensive, to produce 
such work ; and probably the majority of purchasers 
were unwilling to pay the additional price entailed 
by this degree of attention. The few existing copies 
of this character are exceptionally prized by the 
collector to-day. 

The colour-schemes used in printing various 
copies of the same print often differ widely, and 
there is considerable difference in desirability on this 
ground alone. Some of Hiroshige's prints are found 
in monochromes of blue or of grey — some of Hokusai's 
are in bluish green. These rare and beautiful varia- 
tions from the normal are highly valued. On the 
other hand, the late prints of Hiroshige are generally 
printed in raucous greens and reds and purples that 
are an offence to the eye ; and only rarely do we find 
copies of them in which a soft and harmonious 
colour scheme reveals the intention of the artist. 
This explains why certain prints from the " One 
Hundred Views of Yedo" sometimes bring fifteen 
or twenty pounds apiece, though multitudes of 
ordinary copies of the identical print can be pur- 
chased for a few shillings each. Badly coloured 



THE COLLECTOR 417 

examples of Hiroshige's work are plentiful and of 
little value ; harmonious and subtly modulated ones 
are things of unsurpassable beauty, and almost as 
rare as Kiyonagas. The collector of Hiroshige 
prints will scrutinize a specimen with the utmost 
care to determine whether the colour scheme is 
harmonious, and whether the pigments have been 
applied in the delicately graded luminous manner 
that Hiroshige intended. If he finds that the various 
tones are harsh in quality, or are printed in crude, 
unshaded masses, he will reject the sheet. Con- 
siderable familiarity with really fine impressions is 
the only safeguard in this matter. The beginner 
is only too ready to be led astray by the charm 
of the design, not realizing how much this same 
design is enhanced if given the expression of appro- 
priate printing; and he is very likely to find himself 
loaded down with worthless impressions, the very 
sight of which is repugnant to him after he has 
become familiar with fine copies of the same prints- 
Poor copies are worth nothing ; but choice ones are 
never really dear at any price. 

In this matter more than in any other a fine 
collection differs from a poor one, and it is in this 
that the discriminating collector has his best chance 
to match his judgment against that of the dealer. 
Sometimes one can for a few shillings select from a 
pile of worthless Hiroshiges a notable impression that 
is worth twenty times the sum asked for it. 

A generally accepted classification of prints from 
the point of view of the quality of the impression 
would be convenient. There are to-day no recog- 



418 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

nized terms by which to describe the various grades. 
I therefore suggest a division into four groups with 
the following terminology : — 

{a) Artisfs Impression, — Such a print as might 
have been produced under the eye of the artist 
himself — every line clear and sharp, every colour 
delicate and perfectly registered ; the total effect 
exceptionally luminous and harmonious ; no possible 
subtlety of technique left to be desired. 

{U) Fine Impression. — A clear, perfect impression 
such as a careful printer would normally turn out 
at his best, but without that inspired fineness in 
every detail which distinguishes Class {a), 

{c) Good Impression. — Such a print as would 
pass muster with the ordinary buyer of that day — 
good, but not especially fine ; clear, but not notably 
sharp ; pleasantly enough coloured, but not dis- 
tinguished in colour scheme. Very slight defects of 
register or of gradation will not exclude a print from 
this class. 

{d) Late Impression. — One in which serious defects 
appear, such as bad register, raw colour, blurred 
definition, or any other real error. 

Condition. — The state of preservation is one of the 
most important elements that the collector has to 
consider. Collectors of Japanese prints do not as a 
rule pay much attention to questions of margin, but 
they very properly insist that the effects of time and 
wear shall not be such as to obliterate or diminish 
the original beauty of the work itself. The print 
must not be cut down in size, and its face must be 
unmarred. Stains, creases, tears, abrasions, dis- 



THE COLLECTOR 419 

colorations and fading are all defects of a serious 
nature. Only experience can enable one to judge 
whether a certain print is of such rarity that one 
must waive requirements as to condition and accept 
a defective copy. In the case of the Primitives, 
flawless examples are so few that one must needs 
be content with prints that show decidedly the effect 
of time. The same is true of pillar-prints. On the 
other hand, there is no reason why one should ever 
purchase a damaged Hiroshige, unless it be an 
exceptional rarity like the " Monkey Bridge." On 
the whole, the experience of collectors is that in 
every case of doubt the faulty print should be 
rejected. For as one sees a print repeatedly one's 
consciousness of the defect increases, and gradually 
the flaw becomes more obvious to one's observation 
than anything else in the print. 

In many cases prints that are in undamaged 
condition have nevertheless acquired with age a 
peculiar deadness that may not be perceptible to 
the careless eye. If such a print is placed beside 
a perfectly fresh one, the difference is at once 
apparent. In the first case, though the surface is 
unmarred, there is a slight yellowing of the fibres 
of the paper that prevents their sending out that 
vibrating luminosity which is a distinctive beauty in 
the immaculate copy. This absence of luminous 
quality is so common that I mention it less to 
caution the collector against it than to bid him be 
on his guard to seize the few luminous prints that 
are offered him. 

It is against the really brown prints that the 
20 



420 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

novice should be warned. The difference in market 
value between a chocolate coloured copy and a 
brilliantly white copy is enormous, amounting in 
some cases to a thousand per cent. Brilliant copies 
are excessively rare ; and since they are the only 
ones desired by the great collectors, they bring 
record prices. 

The whole question of condition is one of personal 
taste ; collectors are by no means agreed about it. 
European collectors have been, as a rule, less insistent 
upon condition than have the Japanese and 
Americans. There are collectors — though they grow 
fewer daily — who positively prefer faded and " toned " 
prints, because of their softness. This view is an 
ill-advised one. 

I do not say that, if one can have none other, the 
damaged prints may not give one pleasure and 
intimations of the original beauty that was theirs ; 
but I do affirm that such prints are but makeshifts, 
and that their market value is, and always will be, 
very slight. When I began collecting many years 
ago in Japan, I purchased a number of Hokusai 
prints that were much blackened by exposure. I 
thought at the time that any trace of the work of so 
famous a master was worth treasuring. But I have 
found that my purchase was quite valueless, not only 
from the commercial point of view, but also from 
the artistic, since they do not represent the work of 
Hokusai with the slightest approach to adequacy. 

Perfect condition conveys to us perfectly the 
artist's conception ; anything else obliterates or 
modifies his design. Though the beauty of faded 



THE COLLECTOR 421 

or damaged prints is often indisputable, and though 
some prints are so saturated with beauty that a 
certain charm remains as long as any trace of the 
printing is visible, yet these wrecks and fragments 
are not the desirable specimens. The slight soften- 
ing of the colours that almost always comes with 
age is perhaps not detrimental ; but when the 
luminosity of the colours and the brilliant whiteness 
of the paper is gone, an irreparable loss has been 
suffered. For the white spaces and the reflective 
effect of the white fibres under the coloured spaces 
were integral and vital elements in the artist's 
design ; and one cannot say that this is not injured 
when the paper has been turned to a dingy brown. 

Further, it is almost childish to prefer the time- 
changed colours to the fresh ones. For surely, if 
these prints have any value at all, it is not the kind 
of value that beautifully weather-marked pebbles 
have : their significance lies in whatsoever spiritual 
values their designers put into them. They are not 
curiosities of nature, but monuments erected by 
the human spirit in its search for beauty. We go 
very far astray when we admire what is in fact 
lamentable disintegration. To delight in the faded 
tone of a print is like delighting in the cracks of 
the Sistine Chapel. 

The matter can be made clearer if we become 
specific. A certain blue of Harunobu's changes, with 
exposure, to yellow ; and the yellow sky or river 
that results is anything but what the designer 
intended. A certain white of Hiroshige's oxidizes 
into black ; the effect is unfortunate as, for instance. 



422 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

in prints where we now see black snowflakes. The 
rich orange beloved of Koriusai and Shunsho, and 
the delicate pink used by Harunobu, Kiyonaga, 
and Shuncho, are transformed in the course of time 
into rusty black ; then in the place of the luminous 
rooms intended when the artist planned his com- 
position, we see dingy mottled caverns of mud. The 
brilliant early purple turns brown ; the still earlier rose 
colour vanishes entirely. After all these changes, how 
is it possible to prefer the faded print to the fresh 
one ? The resulting accidental effects may happen to 
be beautiful, but they have a destructive influence 
upon those elements which alone make the prints 
worthy of our serious attention as works of art. The 
only marvel is that they do not more completely 
ruin the beauty of the artist's work. 

The chemical disintegrations of which I speak 
are sometimes so great that they are very misleading 
to the uninformed. A writer in the London Times 
of November 6, 191 3, reviewing the exhibition at the 
Albert and Victoria Museum, discovers an amazing 
mare's nest. " One colour alone Harunobu neglects 
in common with all his predecessors and con- 
temporaries," he says. "It remained for the artists 
of the nineteenth century to discover the possibilities 
of blue — a curious and hitherto unnoted omission." 
Indeed, the omission had not been previously noted — 
for the simple reason that it does not exist. Haru- 
nobu used blue a great deal, almost always in 
depicting water or sky ; Shunsho used it repeatedly 
for sky, water, and draperies in the " Ise Monogo- 
tari," and as a solid background in certain hoso-ye 



THE COLLECTOR 423 

actor-prints of which two, in their startling pristine 
brilliancy, are in the Gookin Collection ; Koriusai 
used blue frequently in combination with his famous 
orange. But the blue used by the early artists, 
particularly that of Harunobu and Shunsho, was 
the most unstable of colours, and it is rare to find 
it unaltered by time. Generally it has turned to a 
delicate grey or yellow that is very beautiful, but 
very far from what the artist meant it to be. 

A systematic classification of the various conditions 
in which a print may be found will perhaps put the 
matter clearly before the beginner : — 

1. Publisher's State. — Without the slightest evi- 
dence of any change since the hour it was printed ; 
colours unaltered ; paper absolutely new and spark- 
ling. 

2. Collector's State. — As a print might be after a 
few years in the possession of a careful purchaser ; 
perfect, except for having been mounted or washed, 
or except for slight chemical change in the colours 
due to time only and not to damage ; paper white 
and clear. 

3. Good State. — Marred only by minor defects that 
would be unnoticeable to casual observation — small 
worm-holes, slight tears or creases, moderate fading 
of colours, or slightly rubbed surface ; paper toned 
but not brown. 

4. Ordinary State. — Still retaining its chief beauty 
in spite of noticeable injury by tears, small stains, 
worn or faded colours, or other damage ; paper some- 
what browned by exposure. 

5. Defective State. — Such injuries or colour changes 



424 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

as deprive the print of its significance as a thing of 
beauty ; paper browned or stained. 

Rarity. — The rarity of a print may be a factor in 
determining whether or not it should be purchased. 
Not only does rarity affect monetary value, but it 
sometimes indicates to the collector that this is 
perhaps the only opportunity he will ever have to 
acquire this particular design. The rain scene from 
Hiroshige's "Yedo Kinko Hakkei" has a higher value 
than the equally beautiful rain scene from the " One 
Hundred Yedo Series," for the simple reason that 
copies of the former are very few, and that many 
collectors desire it because of its beauty. There is, 
however, a danger into which many collectors fall, 
of esteeming rarity as a precious element per se. 
Rarity alone, detached from other elements of value 
or interest, is perhaps the most ridiculous element 
that the human race has ever chosen to esteem. 

Associations. — Certain prints have an historical value 
that makes them particularly interesting to the 
collector. For example, there is the well-known trip- 
tych by Utamaro which, because of its portrayal 
of one of the Shoguns in scandalous surroundings, 
was the cause of the imprisonment and death of the 
artist. Also there is the famous memorial portrait 
of Hiroshige by Kunisad?^, which is an especially 
desirable possession because of its associations and 
because the subject is the great landscape painter. 
Dated prints are of interest by reason of the light 
they may throw on uncertain points in Ukioye 
history. Prints that have belonged to famous 
collectors, Hayashi, Wakai, Fenollosa, and others, 



THE COLLECTOR 425 

derive a double interest from that fact ; the associa- 
tian is interesting, and the previous possession by a 
discriminating collector confirms the present owner's 
estimate of the high quality of the print. It should 
not, however, be forgotten that enterprising Japanese 
dealers recognize this fact. A small red stamp can 
be made in Japan for about two shillings ; and a con- 
siderable num.ber of prints now bearing the Wakai 
and Hayashi seals never formed a part of these 
collections. 

Prices. — The subject of prices is one so complex 
and indeterminate that one writes of it only with 
hesitancy. That which seems excessive to one 
collector will be willingly paid by another. No 
stable standard exists ; I have had equally good 
copies of certain Hiroshige prints offered me at 
prices as various as los. and ;£"io. In discussing the 
matter, one can give nothing more than an individual 
impression of the normal and usual figures at which 
prints change hands to-day. Experience is the only 
means by which a collector can equip himself on this 
subject. He will acquaint himself with the prices 
asked by dealers and the prices at which other 
collectors have obtained their specimens ; and from 
these, together with a careful study of auction 
sale catalogues, he forms his judgment. Auction 
prices are likely, however, to be misleading unless 
one sees the prints sold ; for the fact that a certain 
print brought only £'^ at Sotheby's is no indication 
that another copy of the same print may not be 
worth the £^0 asked for it. Variations in condition 
and quality of impression make vast differences in 



426 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

value. An Artist's Impression of Hiroshige's famous 
Tokaido print, " Rain on Shono Pass," might bring 
;{^20 ; a Fine Impression would perhaps sell for 
half that ; a Good Impression would . be worth 
about £4.; while a Late Impression would bring less 
than £2. Similarly a Kiyonaga might vary from 
;^40 to £4. on this account. In the matter of con- 
dition there would be parallel differences. A rare 
Kiyonaga or Utamaro triptych might vary as 
follows : Publisher's State, i^200 ; Collector's State, 
;^IC)0; Good State, £60; Ordinary State, £^0; 
Defective State, ^^5. A great Sharaku might, in 
the same way, be priced at ;^ioo, £yo, ;^50, i^20, 
and ^3 ; and a Harunobu at £60, £so, ;^20, £S, and 
£^. Pillar-prints in perfect preservation are rare ; 
therefore the differences would be even greater ; in 
the case of an exceptional Koriusai, perhaps £;^o, 
£iS, ;^iO, £3, £1, 

The following very rough generalizations may 
suggest something to the inexperienced collector. 
Small Primitive sheets in fair condition can seldom 
be obtained for less than £s to ^15 ; the rare large 
sheets and Pillar-prints generally bring ;^20 to £100. 
These are minimum prices ; for special treasures 
such as Kwaigetsudo, prices may rise to several 
hundred pounds. 

Harunobu's work in perfect condition brings from 
;^20 to £100. Shunsho actors are sometimes to be 
had very cheap, for a pound or two ; but the finest 
designs will bring from ;^io to ;^20. Buncho is 
rare; one may expect to pay at least £1^ to ;^40 
for a fine example. Shunyei and Shunko are about 



THE COLLECTOR 427 

the same in price as Shunsho. A good Shigemasa 
is worth ;^20 to ^50. 

Kiyonaga is expensive ; an attractive small sheet 
by him will cost £s to £1^ ', a fine large sheet, 
£1^ to £40', a triptych brings scores or hundreds. 
Shuncho and the other Kiyonaga followers are only 
a little less costly. A notable Sharaku is rarely 
obtainable for less than. £^0 to £^0. Shunman 
brings almost as much, as also does Kitao Masanobu. 

Small or unimportant sheets by Yeishi, Yeisho, 
Utamaro, Choki, Toyokuni, and Toyohiro can be had 
for a pound or two. From this level, prices go up 
to several hundred pounds, which has been paid for 
Utamaro's " Awabi Shell-Divers." Triptychs, silver- 
prints, and large heads by these men are especially 
expensive, rising from i^20 to much larger sums. 

Two to five pounds will buy a fair Hokusai ; ;^20 
or more may be asked for an unusually fine one, 
and certain rare treasures bring much more than that. 
Prices for Hiroshige prints vary so with the quality 
of the impression that generalizations are impossible. 
It can only be said that the purchaser who gets a 
Hiroshige of the highest quality for £^ is fortunate. 
On the other hand, it must be stated that fine 
Hiroshige prints are often obtainable for consider- 
ably lower prices than this. 

All these prices apply to the best prints in good 
condition. Dealers frequently ask unreasonably 
high sums for second-rate designs or defective copies ; 
in such cases the collector should refuse to be made 
a victim. 

Experience alone can dictate to a collector what 



428 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

prices he may prudently pay. In the most uniformly 
fine private collection I know — a collection com- 
prising only one hundred and fifty prints, but each 
one a treasure — there are few, if any, sheets that 
cost less than £^, and many that cost ;^20 to ;^40. 
Their value ten years from now may very possibly be 
ten times those prices, so admirable has been the 
taste of this particular amateur in selecting beauti- 
fully preserved masterpieces. 

These figures need not terrify the beginner whose 
means are limited. Specimens of great beauty may 
still be brought together with a small expenditure of 
money, if accompanied by a large expenditure of 
taste and judgment. For example, the book-sheets 
of Harunobu called " Serio Bijin Awase," the sheets 
of Shunsho's " Ise Monogatari," the later upright 
prints of Hiroshige, the pillar-prints of Koriusai — all 
of them works of admirable quality — may sometimes 
be obtained with only a small outlay. Their intrinsic 
proportionate worth, and the certainty of their 
advancing in value, are almost as great as in the case 
of those rarer treasures of Masanobu, Kiyonaga, and 
Sharaku which have been largely pre-empted by the 
great collections, and which are now almost pro- 
hibitive in price. 

Yet it would not be a kindness to hold out to the 
novice the hope that, with the expenditure of a few 
shillings, he can form an important collection. Such 
a hope is a mistaken one. Great discretion is 
necessary to obtain at a moderate price prints worth 
having at all. The cheap prints are generally either 
the late and crude ones, or the badly damaged ones. 



THE COLLECTOR 429 

Both of these classes lack the one raison d'etre of 
collecting — beauty. It is true that, as I have said, a 
really fine Hiroshige may still sometimes be picked 
up for a song, but such opportunities are rare ; they 
must be waited for a long time, and must be seized 
with instant determination when they come. The 
collector who is not well informed is more than likely 
to find, after a short period of triumph over his 
bargain, that his copy is a late and poor impression, 
and that even the beauty of composition will not 
permanently satisfy him in the absence of fine and 
appropriate printing. In this connection it should 
be remembered that while the finest prints are 
generally more valuable than their cost, the second- 
rate prints are generally worth nothing whatsoever. 

If one has adequate experience, one can well hunt 
for these opportunities of which I speak. Or if one 
is unable to pay the normal prices for fine works, 
one is obliged to lie in wait for them. The average 
collector will, however, find that in the course of 
years he gains more by paying normal prices to 
high-class dealers for the best prints than by seeking 
in the byways for dubious bargains of speculative 
quality. 

It is true that the prices set upon the finest prints 
are at present high. Recent years have seen an 
enormous advance in values. For example, I have 
known ;^300 to be asked for a copy of the " Monkey 
Bridge " ; £6q for. a superb copy of the Kiso 
Snow Mountains Triptych ; and several other prints 
by Hiroshige have changed hands at £60 apiece. 
These prices of course applied only to remarkably, 



430 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

l^d perhaps uniquely, fine copies. In the last 
edition of his volume, "Japan and its Arts," Mr. 
Marcus B. Huish remarks that prints have "risen 
to extravagant prices — prices sober-minded people 
consider altogether beyond their worth." This is a 
matter of individual opinion. A good Hiroshige at 
;^5, or a Kiyonaga at i^20 will seem to many people 
less extravagant than a "proof" mezzotint by Smith 
from Reynold's " Mrs. Carnac " at seven hundred 
guineas, or Rembrandt's etching of "Jan Six" at 
jC'^yOOO. In fairness to Mr. Huish, however, we must 
continue the quotation. " But these prices," he says, 
" have been paid by the Directors of Museums and 
other astute persons who do not expend the limited 
means at their disposal unless they feel well assured 
that they (the prints) will in the future be either 
unobtainable or at enhanced prices." This is quite 
true. There is no indication that the values of 
Japanese prints will ever be lower than they are 
to-day ; on the contrary, they have been rising 
swiftly and steadily for twenty years, and great 
advances in value may be expected. To these 
advances many forces are already contributing. 
Every year a certain number of prints are accident- 
ally destroyed, decreasing the total available supply. 
No further supplies of large numbers can be expected 
from Japan, which has been ransacked with all the 
thoroughness of skilled searchers armed with the 
lure of high prices. In fact, prices in Japan to-day 
are probably higher than prices in London ; at least, 
higher prices are asked for inferior prints. The 
finest prints bring about the same price everywhere. 



THE COLLECTOR 431 

Each year the great museums of the world acquire 
by purchase or bequest prints which are thus forever 
removed from the market. Each year the number 
of persons who appreciate prints is growing ; and 
there is a continual increase in the number of 
wealthy collectors who can and will pay almost any 
price to obtain what they desire. One may be 
prepared to look back, in twenty years, with mingled 
amazement and regret as he contemplates what will 
then seem the absurdly low prices asked for the 
greatest treasures to-day. 

Therefore, without serious doubt, the prudent 
collector will not suffer because of his present 
acquisitions. It should, however, always be borne 
in mind that the very finest prints — those which 
seem most expensive to-day — are the ones that will 
rise most rapidly in value as time passes. Poor 
impressions, soiled copies, and second-rate composi- 
tions will never be very rare ; but the supremely fine 
sheets — scarce enough now — will grow scarcer with 
every year. 

Nevertheless, collecting as an investment is not 
advocated. If the collector is not moved by the 
delight he gets from the aesthetic qualities of the 
prints, he had far better leave them entirely alone. 
Nothing but the passion of real enthusiasm and per- 
ception will enable him to select the best works ; and 
without this selection his prints are not likely to be 
of much ultimate value. When, however, the collector 
makes his acquisitions out of pure love for their 
beauty, it is right and prudent that he should con- 
sider their value in later years. Such a collector 



432 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

need have no fear ; what was to him a dehght and 
a dissipation will probably in the end prove to his 
heirs an investment of profit. 

Forgeries. 

The collector must be constantly on his guard 
against reprints, forgeries, and reproductions. These 
are not as common as some writers believe ; but 
they exist. 

Reprints are impressions made at a time so long 
after the original edition that they have not the 
original colouring. The register of such prints is 
generally faulty, and the lines are not sharp. So 
long as the blocks are in existence these reprints are 
possible. Early reprints are merely late editions of 
the originals, and are not objectionable if the blocks 
have not become worn ; but late ones are undesirable. 
A print made to-day from the original blocks of 
Harunobu, did they exist, would have no value. 

Forgeries are works produced in the style and 
over the signature of some famous artist. Since 
they have no prototype among the artist's real works, 
they present difficulties of their own ; there is no 
genuine copy of the same print with which to 
compare them. They are very rare ; their chief 
occurrence is in the cases of Harunobu and Utamaro. 

Reproductions are prints made from new blocks 
cut in imitation of the original ones. For unknown 
reasons a second edition of certain prints sometimes 
was made very shortly after the first, from re-cut 
blocks. These prints have no necessary difference 
in beauty or value from those of the first edition. 



THE COLLECTOR 433 

But such cases are few. Far commoner are the 
reproductions proper — most of them copies made 
within the last twenty-five years, sometimes with 
fraudulent intent, and sometimes merely as honest 
commercial copies. In either case, they may be 
used fraudulently by a present owner. 

The ordinary modern reproduction is not difficult 
to detect. It is generally on a harder, brittler paper 
than a genuine print. The feeling of the paper 
between one's fingers is more like that of our 
wrapping-paper than like that of the old soft 
papers used by the Ukioye artists. Its surface is 
compact and glassy, not spongy and pliant. It has 
a starchy stiffness, and lacks the soft, luminous tone 
of the genuine. Generally the lines of the block are 
clumsily cut, lacking the grace and strength of the 
original ; and a careful and minute comparison with 
an original impression of the same print will invari- 
ably show difference in small details of the lines. 
Even the Japanese are not skilful enough to cut 
a new block precisely like the old one. 

The colours of a reproduction constitute perhaps 
the most definite danger signal. They are, as a rule, 
flat and dead, lacking the soft brilliancy of the old 
colours. Very seldom are they graded with care — a 
repellent harshness marks them. Particularly does 
the blue lack the life and depth of the genuine blue ; 
and the red and yellow are likely to be staring. 

Freshness and perfect preservation are never, in the 
absence of other signs, to be regarded as evidence 
of recent production. Conversely, it is only the 
merest bungler who regards worm-holes or faded. 



434 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

browned, and damaged condition as any evidence 
of age. The Japanese use tea-leaves and various 
other devices to give this time-worn appearance to 
the most flagrant reproductions. For all I know, 
they may have trained worms to eat holes. These 
damaged, tea-soaked prints would be almost worth- 
less even if they were genuine. The stray tourist 
in Japan, however, customarily accumulates a large 
number of these soiled tatters, fearing to touch the 
fresh-looking copies. And the Japanese willingly 
calm his fears by soaking and soiling their reprints. 

There are, however, a few reproductions of so fine 
a quality that detection is extremely difficult. These 
are the sheets over which experts shake their heads 
and go away muttering, to return for councils and 
deliberations and sometimes total disagreement. 
There exists in an American collection a certain 
Kiyonaga print which half a dozen experts believe 
to be a modern fraud, though another half-dozen are 
prepared to defend its authenticity until Judgment 
Day. Work of this quality is expensive to produce, 
and the price asked for it is therefore always high. 

Certain specific reproductions are to be guarded 
against. Many fraudulent copies of Hiroshige's 
" Monkey Bridge " and " Kiso Snow Gorge " are on 
the market ; all those I have ever seen are so poor 
in colour and so different in line-details that it seems 
incredible that anyone should be deceived. Several 
of the Tokaido Set have been imitated, rather poorly ; 
and also some of the Birds and Flowers. Quite 
recently, there has appeared a remarkable Lake 
Biwa set, produced with such beauty and skill that 



THE COLLECTOR 435 

several of the greatest authorities in the world were 
at first deceived by it. Hokusai's " Imagery of the 
Poets," "Waterfalls," "Thirty-six Views of Fuji," and 
"Loocho Islands," have been reprinted; the colours 
and the lines are a little imperfect ; and no one who 
uses care need be misled by them. They are, how- 
ever, good enough to be dangerous to the beginner. 
Utamaro's most famous works, particularly the 
" Awabi Shell-Divers " triptych, have been reprinted 
fairly well. Perilous imitations of several of the 
Primitives are extant ; the stiff paper is almost the 
only means of detection. Sharaku has been reprinted 
dangerously well ; one lately discovered fraudulent 
print of his sold for a high price at Sotheby's some 
years ago, and subsequently passed unquestioned 
through the hands of a dozen English and American 
experts, until finally an accidental comparison of it 
with a genuine sheet revealed points of difference. 
Another copy of this same reproduction remains to 
this day as the treasured possession of a well-known 
English collection. 

Possibly the most dangerous of all forgeries and 
reprints are those of Harunobu's small square prints, 
for they have sometimes been produced with notable 
skill. Even the greatest experts have been deceived 
by them. Fenollosa, at No. 131 of the Ketcham 
Catalogue, describes in the most glowing terms, as 
"the central point of all Ukioye," a print which its 
present owner has found to be a reproduction, not 
thirty years old, and has discarded from his collection. 

The reputable dealers, often men of much ex- 
perience, never offer reproductions for sale, though 
21 



436 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

they, like any one else, may occasionally be deceived 
by the finest of the fraudulent ones. They use their 
best skill to protect their customers, and the pro- 
tection is generally efficient. If, however, a dealer 
is unwilling to give assurance in writing that the 
print is genuine, or if his stock contains more than 
the two or three reproductions accountable for on 
the ground of bad judgment, he should be avoided 
as untrustworthy. 

The experienced collector, who has seen and 
handled tens of thousands of prints, becomes ac- 
customed to the texture of the various papers, the 
tones of the various colours, and the contours of 
line-cutting. His familiarity produces in him a sixth 
sense which is his instinctive guide in the detection 
of frauds. Later investigation may define his original 
impression and prove it to have been correct ; but in 
the first instance he relies on intuition. The less ex- 
perienced collector has no such guide; and he should 
realize that he has not, and not try to evolve one 
from his inner consciousness. Nothing is more ludi- 
crous than to see such a person in a print-shop in 
Japan. He turns over pile after pile of prints, select- 
ing those which his judgment tells him are "really 
old." What he generally means is, "really dirty." 
Advice from bystanders is not often welcomed by 
him, and the only peaceable thing one can do is 
to leave him to his own curious devices. There is 
a certain malicious pleasure to be obtained in going 
through the piles such a collector has discarded, 
and selecting from them, as one sometimes can, a flaw- 
lessly preserved copy of some fine print which he 



THE COLLECTOR 437 

passed by as too fresh-looking to be anything but 
fraudulent. But when he returns to his hotel at 
night and exhibits triumphantly the treasures he has 
garnered during the day, it would be a hard heart 
that could do anything but keep silent and weep 
inwardly. The sixth sense can be relied on only if 
one has had much experience. If one is inex- 
perienced, the safe way is to ask expert advice. 

For the experienced collector I venture to suggest 
only one maxim. If vaguely suspicious of a print, 
but unable to tell exactly why, discard the print. 
Your whole accumulated experience is indefinably 
expressing itself in your suspicion ; and nine times 
out of ten it is right. 

Care of a Collection. 

When a print is once properly prepared and 
mounted, it needs no further care except protection 
from injury. Prolonged exposure to sunlight is not 
desirable, since fading may result ; dampness is to be 
guarded against because of the danger of mildew, 
a terrible foe ; care in handling must be exercised, 
so that the print be not rubbed, creased, or torn. 
But if these elementary precautions are employed, 
the print will take care of itself 

It may be worth while for the benefit of the 
beginner to trace the steps that are taken by a 
collector between the time when he becomes the 
owner of a new print and the time when he puts it 
away in his portfolios as an established part of his 
collection. 

The first step is to examine the print with care 



438 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

and ascertain what, if any, processes are necessary to 
prepare it for mounting. If the condition of the 
sheet is flawless, nothing is required. If its condition 
is in one way or another defective, it is the task of the 
collector to determine whether any operation within 
his command can remedy the defect, and to decide 
how he will accomplish his end. 

This is perhaps a proper place to caution the 
inexperienced, and in some cases even the experienced 
collector, against acts of vandalism. To cut down, 
colour, or otherwise mutilate a print, is one of those 
unforgivable offences which often demonstrate con- 
clusively how easy it is for a fool to destroy in five 
minutes the achievement of a genius's lifetime. One 
well-known collector, now dead, boiled his Harunobus 
in paraffin to give them lustre ; another painted 
branches into the pillar-prints of Koriusai ; another 
cut down the size of his Hiroshiges, leaving only 
those portions that particularly pleased him. If the 
feelings of later collectors have any potency in 
heaven, these men are now in hell. Not only is any 
attempt to improve upon the artist's work a con- 
temptible piece of presumption, but even the mere 
effort to repair damages inflicted by time may be an 
unwise venture. Frequently such injuries could be 
remedied by an expert were it not that some pre- 
ceding bungler, with the best intentions in the world, 
has, out of sheer inexperience, made the injuries 
irreparable. For example, if a print comes into the 
expert's hands untouched he can literally slice off 
a microscopic layer of the paper and thus remove 
a bad surface-spot ; but if the paper has been 



THE COLLECTOR 439 

tampered with by ignorant attempts to erase, he is 
helpless. Tears, stains, abrasions, and chemical 
decomposition may yield to skilful treatment ; but 
unless one knows with the utmost exactitude what 
he expects to accomplish and how he intends to 
proceed at every step, he had best leave the matter 
strictly alone, or entrust it to other hands. 

If the collector will remember that, though he is 
the present owner of his prints, he is not the final 
owner, he will be impelled to move with caution in 
his handling of them. Long after he is dead and 
forgotten, generations of lovers of beauty will treasure 
the sheets he once owned, and he will deserve their 
reproaches or their thanks according to the respect 
he has shown for these works. He is custodian for 
posterity, and his trust is one worthy of careful 
thought. He cannot do better than bear constantly 
in mind what should be the golden rule for collectors 
in all fields : Make no repairs, institute no changes, 
that cannot be altered ; never do anything to a work 
of art that cannot be undone by its next owner. 

Trim no margins ; it is easy to mat them. Do 
not try to make more decent the objectionable 
rendering of a nude ; sell the print to some one who 
does not find this rendering objectionable. If the 
colour has faded out, do not try to paint it in ; 
possibly some one else may find the mere black- 
and-white composition beautiful, and he may prefer 
to see even the faded work of Kiyonaga rather than 
Kiyonaga plus the improvizations of a doubtless less 
illustrious designer. 

No one needs such cautions as little as do the few 



440 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

experts whose experience renders them competent to 
attempt what are almost capital operations. They 
are, of all collectors, the most reluctant to essay any 
manipulation whatsoever. To witness the repeated 
examinations and deliberations which the competent 
workman expends on so simple a question as whether 
or not a certain black spot shall be restored to its 
original orange hue is to learn a serious lesson. 

The first of the steps to be taken in improving the 
condition of a print will generally be washing. If a 
print is badly wrinkled or creased, or if it appears to 
have dust and dirt on its surface, a bath is the best 
possible thing for it. A perfectly fresh print should 
never be washed ; nothing is to be gained by it, and 
much may be lost. For in many cases a little of 
the colour will come out in the course of the process, 
and the brilliance of the print will suffer slightly. 
Certain prints should be washed only if it is abso- 
lutely necessary. Harunobu prints with transparent 
red in them, Shuncho's that have purple, and any 
print that contains a delicate pigment known to 
collectors as " surimono blue," should be kept out of 
water if possible. These colours are not fast, and 
they are likely to go down in tone, or even run over 
into the adjoining parts of the print. The yellows 
and greens are as a rule unchanging, but a large 
number of the other colours are subject to modifica- 
tion, particularly in the work of the Kiyonaga and 
Utamaro Periods. The prints of Hiroshige and 
Hokusai generally undergo no change. 

Prints with silver backgrounds should not be 
washed, and pillar-prints that consist of two joined 



THE COLLECTOR 441 

sheets of paper should be kept in water only long- 
enough to become wet through ; longer immersions 
will cause the sheets to separate, and necessitate 
troublesome work in rejoining them. 

The process of washing is simple. A large vessel 
— a prosaic bath-tub is as good as anything — is filled 
with luke-warm water, and the print is put in and 
allowed to soak for a few minutes. If another sheet 
of paper has been pasted on the back of the print, 
this is carefully peeled off after the paste has become 
thoroughly wet. Adhering daubs of paste may be 
rubbed off with the fingers. Sometimes a very 
brown and dirty print can be cleaned a little by 
spreading it out while wet on a sheet of glass and 
applying a solution of some good washing-soap. 
Such a proceeding should be resorted to only in 
case of extreme dirtiness ; and prolonged soaking 
in clear water should follow. 

When the washing is finished, the print is lifted 
from the water and allowed to drain for a few 
seconds, and is then carefully spread face downwards 
on a fresh sheet of heavy unglazed cardboard of the 
kind known as " blank." By means of a large damp 
brush or a delicately handled cloth, the back of the 
print is smoothed out so that it lies perfectly flat 
and even. Another sheet of cardboard is then placed 
on top of it, and the two sheets, with the print 
between them, are put away under heavy weights, 
such as two or three portfolios, and allowed to remain 
untouched for twenty-four hours or more. A good 
deal of dirt, and unfortunately a little colour, will 
generally soak out of the print and into the card- 



442 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

board. When dry, the print peels neatly away from 
the cardboard, with its surface freshened and smoothed, 
sometimes almost remade. 

Thin, worn, or disintegrated prints are difficult to 
handle during these processes ; when wet, they tear 
like damp cigarette-paper. Sometimes prints that 
have been damaged and skilfully mended will float 
away in two or three pieces upon immersion. These 
and other possible troubles make it advisable that 
the inexperienced collector venture not too boldly in 
trying experiments. At least let him begin on prints 
of no value. 

After the print is dry, worm-holes or tears can be 
mended either by patching or inlaying. Generally 
it is best to dampen the paper before attempting 
this. The simplest form of repair is to paste back 
of the hole a small piece of paper of the same colour 
as the print. A collector will have on hand a number 
of worthless damaged prints of various shades, out of 
which he cuts pieces for this purpose. Inlaying is 
more difficult ; it involves either inserting a piece of 
paper cut to match the hole exactly, or inserting 
loose paper-pulp which is moulded to fill the hole. 
Both processes require more skill than the average 
collector can master, and are best left to the expert. 

Stains and spots present difficult problems. Some 
are superficial, and can be gradually sliced off with 
a very sharp thin knife — an operation that will 
invariably result in the ruin of the print if tried by 
a novice. Minute knowledge of the behaviour of 
the curious fibrous Japanese paper is necessary for 
success ; the expert generally works under a glass, 



THE COLLECTOR 443 

and prays continuously while he works. Stains that 
have soaked deeply into the paper are almost hope- 
less. Mildew discoloration is ineradicable. Grease- 
spots sometimes yield to ether, benzine, or other 
common solvents. The use of these is, however, a 
desperate remedy ; they may spoil the print even if 
they remove the spot. 

Certain chemical changes in the pigments can be 
reversed, and the original colour restored. The 
blackening of tan, that orange pigment used by 
Koriusai and many other artists, can be removed 
and the original brilliance brought back. The same 
is true of a certain white that blackens with time. 
The processes employed are, however, easily capable 
of misuse ; and the few persons who know the 
methods prefer not to make them public. 

If a portion of a print is missing, due to a tear 
or to the ravages of moths, it is legitimate and 
desirable to tint the paper that is used to fill in 
the hole so that it matches its surroundings. Water- 
colours and a fine brush are employed. But on no 
account should the surface of the print itself be 
painted ; if the colour has worn off in spots, any 
attempt to restore it will merely increase the 
damage still further. 

A very thin print, or one that has been torn in 
several places, is best treated by pasting on the 
back of it while damp a dampened sheet of thin, 
tough Japanese paper. The operation, simple as 
it sounds, is difficult and requires practice to produce 
a smooth result. 

Some collectors paste down the four edges of 



444 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

their prints on thin sheets of cardboard to preserve 
their flatness. The practice is an undesirable one ; 
it prevents any examination of the back of the 
print ; and does not achieve its end, since the print 
and the mount expand and contract differently, 
and wrinkles are almost sure to appear eventually. 
The better practice is to apply a mere touch of 
paste to the two upper corners of the print, and 
affix these lightly to the mount. Over this is then 
placed a mat, with a hole cut to fit the print 
exactly, covering and holding down the print's 
edges, and protecting it from abrasions. The size 
of the mount and mat is determined by individual 
taste ; 3 or 4 inches margin would seem to be 
the minimum desirable. After many experiments 
I have adopted 22J x 15^ inches as the size for 
my own collection. Mr. Gookin prefers 25 x 16 ; 
but he also finds 23 x 15 J satisfactory if the 
economy of space is any object. As to thickness, 
tastes also differ ; the mount should be at least thick 
enough not to bend much with ordinarily careful 
handling. Heavy Japanese Vellum makes the best 
mats ; it is expensive, but it greatly enhances the 
appearance of the prints. 

For triptychs and pillar-prints, a much larger 
and heavier mount is required than in the case of 
ordinary sheets. If the collector has only a few 
of the former, he may prefer to mount the three 
sheets separately, for convenience in storing, and 
place the three mounts side by side only when 
exhibiting them. If the two end sheets are mounted 
so that they come very close to the right and 



THE COLLECTOR 445 

to the left-hand edges of their respective mounts, 
the effect of the three assembled is by no means 
bad ; and the ease of handling them is an advantage. 
Only the most perfectly matched triptychs can 
in any case dispense with the necessity of narrow 
strips left in the mat to cover the junction-edges 
of the sheets. 

Some collectors have card-catalogues in which 
they keep all information relating to each print. 
Others use the bottom of the mount under the mat 
for that purpose. For a large collection the former 
is preferable ; for a small one, the latter. 

The mounted prints are best kept in portfolios 
or Solander-boxes, laid flat^on shelves and protected 
from dust as much as possible. Within the portfolio 
or box, the arrangement that is most useful is the 
chronological one. 

There have been in the past several collections, 
such as the Hayashi and Wakai, whose owners felt 
it to be appropriate that they stamp their private 
seals upon the face of each print held by them. 
It is useless to comment upon the wisdom or un- 
wisdom of their course ; for the thing is done, and 
many a fine print is now indelibly branded with 
these insignia. But it may be pointed out that the 
present practice of reputable collectors does not 
sanction such acts. Should any collector who 
happens to read these lines contemplate thus im- 
mortalizing himself, I suggest that he seriously 
consider whether even one small seal is not a dis- 
turbing factor when injected into a design so subtly 
calculated as the finest prints. 



446 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

Further, if one collector may so stamp his prints, 
all others surely have a similar privilege ; and if 
the habit became universal, what would be the 
appearance of a print which, in the next two 
hundred years, should pass — as a print might easily 
pass — through the hands of twenty collectors ? 
And lastly, is there not a certain betrayal of petty 
conceit when the mere temporary owner of a great 
work of art judges the fact of his brief ownership 
to be of such importance that future generations 
must be told of it ; and so places his own emblem 
beside that of the creator of the print — beside the 
name of the immortal Kiyonaga or Sharaku ? 

Conclusion. 

The day is coming — perhaps it is already here — 
when the Japanese Print will become the spiritual 
possession of a wider circle than that limited group 
of collectors who have been devoted to it in the 
past. Alien though this art is, it has power to 
penetrate to regions of the mind which Western 
art too often leaves unvisited. 

Much is said unwisely about the elevating and 
educative power of art. The man in the street has 
come to believe that the elevating force resides in 
the theme which a work of art presents — that a 
picture of Galahad riding for the Grail is a lofty 
thing, and that a picture of the wings of the theatre 
during a ballet is a base one. Hence has arisen that 
unspeakably childish modern school of middle-class 
painters whose " pictures with a story " — generally a 
sentimental or edifying story — are the terror of the 



THE COLLECTOR 447 

art-lover. After them, no wonder that even the 
Cubists came as a relief. 

As every artist knows, the elevating power that 
resides in the mere subject of a picture has at best no 
more force than a moral maxim ; the mind may 
assent to it, but the heart is unmoved. The same 
may be said in the case of a poem. The glory of 
poetry is not that it furnishes elevated sentiments in 
rhyme for public speakers to quote, but that it 
embodies music and thought combined in so fitly 
proportioned and expressive a structure that the 
reader carries away with him a certain acquaintance 
with perfection and a lasting desire for ideal beauty 
in everything. 

Thus it is only through its power to cultivate the 
spectator's sense of form that art may be called 
elevating. Close familiarity with the productions of 
great artists gradually develops in the spectator an 
understanding of proportion, harmony, and conscious 
design, evoking in him the ability to perceive and 
even create order and freedom. 

Because of the fact that the best Japanese prints 
are so superb an expression of the sense of form, 
they may be rated high as cultural agents. In them 
the eye finds little or no distraction occasioned by 
mere subject. Here speak the pure elements of 
artistic creation, liberated from combination with 
elements of accidental and personal charm. They 
contain the quintessence of all those harmonious and 
significant qualities which men desire of life. He 
who really takes them into his consciousness will be 
repelled by disorder, dullness, and indeterminateness 



448 CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS 

all his days. And probably the world will be 
saved by its hatred of these things. Therefore the 
Japanese print cannot be regarded as primarily a 
pattern for future designers of wood-engraving ; it 
appears to have a far wider and deeper office to 
perform. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Actors, 134, 304, 306 
Anchi, see KwaigetsudS 
Ando, see Kwaigetsudo 
Anshin, see Yasunobu 
Ashikuni, 356 
Ashimaro, 299 
Ashiyuki, 356 

Banki, 298 

Banto, 173 

Bokusen, 375 

Buddhism, 55 

BuNCHO, 185, 209, 426 

Bunkaku, see Okumura Masanobu 

Bunro, 299 

Chikamaro, see Kiosai 
Chikanobu, 299 
Chikashige, 353 
Chincho, 91 
Chiryu, i73 
Choki, 319, 427 
Chosho, see Nagamatsu 
Condition, 418 
Courtesan, see Yoshiwara 

Denroku, 108 
Dohan, see Kwaigetsudo 
Doshin, see Kwaigetsudo 
Doshu, see Kwaigetsudo 

Forgeries, 432 
Fujinobu, 108, 173 



Furuyama, 75 
Fusanobu, 108 
Fuyo, 299 

Gakutei, 374 

Gangakusai, 375 

Genpachi, see Okumura Masanobu 

Genroku Era, 65, 134 

Genshichi, 80 

Ginsetsu, see Fusanobu 

Gogaku, see Gakutei 

Gokei, 375 

Gokyo, 278 

Goshichi, 299 

Gosotei, 35I5 398 

Gyokushi, 157 

Hanamaro, 299 

Hanzan, 356 

Haruhiro, see Koriusai 

Haruji, 173 

Harumachi, see Utamaro II 

Harumitsu, 234 

Harunobu, 129, 136, 208, 422, 

426 
Harushige, 171 
Harutoshi, 108 
Harutsugu, 173 
Hasegawa Toun, 75 
Hidemaro, 299 
Hirosada, 356 
HiROSHiGE I, 357, 375> 4i5» 426 

22 *5i 



452 



INDEX 



Hiroshige II, 397 

Hiroshige III, 398 

Hisanobu, 299 

Hogetsudo, see Okumura Masanobu 

Hokkei, 374 

Hokuba, 375 

Hokuga, 375 

Hokuju, 374 

Hokumio, 356 

HoKUSAi, 258, 379, 427 

Hokushu, 356 

Hokusui, 375 

Hokutai, 375 

Hokutei, 375 

Hoku-un, 375 

Hokuyei, 375 

Hokuyo, 375 

HOriu, 173 

Isai, 375 

Ise Monogatari, 56, 182 
Isomaro, 299 
lyeyasu, 49 

Juzan, 375 

Kagetoshi, 356 

Kako, see Hokusai 

Kammyo, sec Okumura Masanobu 

Kanamaro, 299 

Kano School, 50, 52, 54 

Katsukawa School, 129 

Katsumasa (Kichikawa), 95 

Katsumasa (Yoshimura), 75 

Katsunobu, 95 

Keiju, 375 

Keisai, see Masayoshi 

Keri, 375 

Kichi, 75 

Kikumaro I, 298 

Kikumaro II, 298 

Kiosai, 353 



Risen, 173 
Kitamaro, 299 
Kiyoaki, 92 
Kiyofusa, 354, 123, 84 
Kiyoharu (Torii), 124 
Kiyoharu (Kondo Sukegoro), 92 
Kiyohide (Torii), 124 
Kiyohide II, 234 
Kiyohiro, 123 
Kiyohisa, 234 
Kiyokatsu, 234 
Kiyokuni, 353 
Kiyomasa, 234 
KlYOMASU, 84, 88 
Kiyomine, 84, 123, 354 
KlYOMITSU, 84, 116 

Kiyomitsu II, see Kiyomine 
Kiyomitsu III, see Kiyofusa 
Kiyomoto (Torii), 124 
Kiyomoto II, 355 
KiYONAGA, 84, 217, 241, 259, 405, 
426 

KlYONOBU I, 83 
KlYONOBU II, 87, 90 

Kiyonobu (Kondo), 95 
Kiyor5, 95 
Kiyosada I, 355 
Kiyosada II, 354 
Kiyosato, 124 
Kiyoshige, 91 
Kiyosomo, 92 
Kiyotada I, 91 
Kiyotada II, 355 
Kiyotada III, 355 
Kiyotomo, 92 
Kiyotei, 234 
Kiyotoki, 234 
Kiyotoshi, 124 
Kiyotsugi, 234 
Kiyotsune (Torii), 124 
Kiyotsune II, 234 
Kiyoyasu, 355 



INDEX 



453 



Kiyoyuki, 234 

Kogan, 173 

Kokan, see Shiba Kokan 

Komatsuken, 173 

KoRiUSAi, 157, 159 

Kuniaki, 353 

Kuniao I, 353 

Kuniao II, 353 

Kunichika, 353 

Kimifusa, 353 

Kunihana, 353 

Kunihiko, 353 

Kunikane I, 353 

Kunikane II, 353 

Kunihiro, 353 

Kunihisa, 353 

Kunikatsu, 353 

Kunikiyo, 353 

Kunimaro, 299 

Kunimaru I, 353 

Kunimaru II, 353 

Kunimasa I, 318, 352 

Kunimasa II, see Kunisada II 

Kunimasa III, see Kunisada III 

Kunimichi I, 353 

Kunimichi II, 353 

Kunimitsu, 353 

Kunimune, 353 

Kuninaga, 353 

Kuninobu I, 173 

Kuninobu II, 353 

Kunisada I, 351 

Kunisada II, 352 

Kunisada III, 352 

Kunitada, 353 

Kunitaka, 353 

Kunitohisa, 353 

Kunitaki, 353 

Kunitane, 353 

Kunitera, 353 

Kuniteru, 353 

Kunitoki, 353 



Kunitora, 353 
Kunitsugi I, 353 
Kunitsugi II, 353 
Kunitsuma, 353 
Kuniyasu I, 353 
Kuniyasu II, 399 
Kuniyoshi, 375 
Kuniyuki, 353 
Kuzayeimon, 108 

KWAIGETSUDO, 79 

Kyoden, see Kitao Masanobu 
Kyosen, 157 
Kyuyeimon, 108 

Landscape, 356 

Magosaburo, see Shigenaga 

Mangetsudo, 105 

Masafusa, 105 

Masanobu (Hishikawa), 75 

Masanobu (Kitao), 248, 427 

Masanobu (Okumura), 95 

Masanojo, 75 

Masataka, 75 

Masayoshi, 250 

Masks, 304 

Masunobu (Tanaka), 92, 173 

Masunobu II, 92, 172 

Matabei, 58, 73 

Mazunobu, 95 

Michimaro, 299 

Minemaro, 299 

Minko, 173 

Mitemaro, 299 

Mitsunobu, 95 

Morikuni, 75 

Morobei, 75 

Morofusa, 75 

Moromasa, 75 

Moromori, 75 

Moronaga, 75 

MORONOBU, 69 



454 INDEX 



Moroshige, 75 
Morotada, 124 
Morotane, 75 
Morotsugi, 75 
Motonobu, 105 
Muranobu, 173 

Nagahide I, 108 
Nagahide II, 328 
Nagamatsu, 328 
Nagayoshi, see Choki 
Nichiren, 58 
Niho, 375 

Nishimura School, 105 
No Drama, 303 
Norihide, see KwaigetsudO 
Norishige, see KwaigetsudO 
Noritatsu, see KwaigetsudO 
Nudes, 115, 123, 222 

Oiran, see Yoshiwara 
Omume, 92 
Osaka School, 355 
Osawa, 75 
Otsu-ye, 67 

Pillar Prints, icx), 123, 151, 164, 

233 
Primitives, 63, 127, 207, 426 
Polychrome, 140 
Printing, 40, 414 
Prices, 425 

Ranko, 356 
Renshi, 375 
Rihei, 108 
Riusen, 75 
Riushu, 75 
Rosen, 157 
Ryokin, 58 

Ryujo, 75 

Ryukoku, 299 



Ryusai, 375 
Ryushi, 173 

Sadafusa, 356 

Sadaharu, 108 

Sadahide, 400 

Sadahiro, 356 

Sadakage, 356 

Sadamasa, 356 

Sadamasu, 356 

Sadanobu (Hasegawa), 356, 399 

Sadanobu (Tamura), 92 

Sadatora, 356 

Sadatoshi, 95 

Sadayoshi, 356 

SanchO, 234 

Seiko, 173 

Sekicho, 299 

Sekiga, 198 

Sekiho, 299 

Sekijo, 299 

Sekiyen, 285, 320 

Sekkyo, 299 

Sencho, 353 

Senga, 157 

Senka, 299 

Senkwado, see Shigenaga 

Sharaku, 194, 260, 299, 323, 405, 

426 
Shiba Kokan, 156, 171 
Shigefusa, 108 
Shigeharu, 108 

Shigemasa, 182, 199, 201, 426 
Shigemasa III, see Yoshimaro I 
Shigenaga, 105 
Shigenobu (Hirose), 108 
Shigenobu (Ichiusai), see Hiroshige 

II 
Shigenobu (Kawashima), 75 
Shigenobu (Nishimura), 105, 107 
Shigenobu (Ryukwado Ichiichido), 

108 



INDEX 



455 



Shigenobu (Tsunegawa), 107 
Shigenobu (Yamamoto), 108 
Shigenobu (Yanagawa), 297, 374 
Shigeyama, 375 
Shiko, see Choki 
Shoha, 173 

Shoshin, see Masayoshi 
Shikimaro, 298 
Shiro, see Kiyonobu II 
Shoyu, 198 
Shimbei, 75 
Shinsai, 375 
Shintoku, 299 

Shoshoken, see Komatsuken 
Shucho, 298 

Shuha, see Ishikawa Toyonobu 
Shuncho (Katsukawa), 237, 427 
Shuncho (Koikawa), see Utamaro II 
Shunbeni, 353 
Shundo, 198 
Shunkaku, 198 
Shunken, 198 
Shunki, 19S 
Shunkio, 198 
Shunkiosai, 299 
Shunjo, see Shunyei 
Shunko (Harumitsu), see Harumitsu 
Shunko (Katsukawa), 197, 426 
Shunko II, 198, 234 
Shunko (Kichosai), 198 
Shunkyoku, 198 
Shunri, 198 
Surimono, 373 
Shunrin, 198 
Shunman, 246, 427 
Shunro, see Hokusai 
Shunshi, 356 
Shunsei, 198 
Shuntei, 198 
Shunsen, 399 

Shunsho (Katsukawa), 134, 174, 
186, 193, 199, 201, 208, 426 



Shunsho II, 356 
Shunsui, 177 
Shuntoku, 198 
Shunyei, 193, 300, 426 
Shunyen, 198 
Shunzan, 245 
Shuseido, 105 
Soan, 173 
Sobai, 198 
Sogaku, 299 
Sogiku, 173 
Soraku, 279, 299 
Sori, see Hokusai 
Sugakudo, 353 
Suiyo, 173 

SUKENOBU, 75 

Tadeharu, 95 
Taigaku, 375 
Taito, see Hokusai and Yanagawa 

Shigenobu 
Takahashi, see Rosen 
Takemaro, 298 

Tanchosai, see Okumura Masanobu 
Tange, 75 
Terunobu, 92 
Terushige, 92 

Theatre, 133, also see Actors 
Toban, see Kwaigetsudo 
Tojin, see Kwaigetsudo 
Tokugawa Dynasty, 49 
Tominobu, 353 
Tomofusa, 75 
Torii School, 84 
Tosa School, 53 
Toshimaro, 299 
Toshinobu, 104 
Toshiyuki, 75 
Toshu, see Kwaigetsudo 
TOYOHARU, 199, 200 
Toun, 75 
TOYOHIRO I, 320, 338, 427 



456 



INDEX 



Toyohiro II, 353 

Toyohisa, 201 

Toyokiyo, 353 

ToYOKUNi I, 328, 339, 427 

Toyokuni II, see Gosotei 

Toyokuni III, see Kunisada I 

Toyokuni IV, see Kunisada II 

Toyokuni V, see Kunisada III 

Toyokuma, 124 

Toyomaro, 298 

Toyomaru, 201 

Toyomasu, 124 

Toyonaga, 124 

ToYONOBU (Ishikawa), 108, 200 

Toyonobu (Utagawa), 200 

Toyoshige, see Gosotei 

Triptych, 230 

Tsukimaro (Kitagavva), see Kiku- 

maro I 
Tsukimaro (Tanimoto), 298 
Tsukioka Tange, 75 

Ujimasa, 173 

Ukioye School, 54, 65, 70 

Utamaro, 257, 260, 279, 426 

Utamaro II, 298 

Utagawa School, 200 

Wagen, 92 
Wowo, 75 

Yamamoto School, 108 

Yasumichi, 375 

Yasunobu, 107 

Yasutomo, see Kwaigetsudo 

Yeicho, 279 

Yeiju, 279 

Yeiki, 279 

Yeiri (Rekisenti), 279 

Yeiri (Yeishi's Pupil), 279 

Yeiru, 279 

Yeisen, 398 



Yeishi, 262, 404, 427 

Yeishin, 279 

Yeisho, 274, 427 

Yeisui, 278 

Yeizan, 354 

Yencho, 299 

Yenkyo, 317 

Yenshi, 199 

Yoshichika, 353 

Yoshifuji, 353 

Yoshifusa, 353 
I Yoshikata, 299 

Yoshiharu, 353 

Yoshikage, 353 

Yoshiku, 356 

Yoshiki, 299 

Yoshikazu, 353 
i Yoshikuni, 353 

Yoshimaro I, 298 
I Yoshimaro II, 298 
: Yoshimori, 299 

Yoshimune, 299 

Yoshisato, 353 

Yoshinobu (Fujikawa), 92 

Yoshinobu (Komai), 172, 108 

Yoshinobu (Tamura), 92 

Yoshinobu (Yamomoto), 108, 172 

Yoshitaki, 353 

Yoshitomi, 353 

Yoshitora, 299 

Yoshitoshi, 299 

Yoshitsuya, 299 

Yoshitsuna, 353 

Yoshitsuru, 353 

Yoshiyuki, 400 

Yoshiume, 353 

Yoshiwara, 210, 259, 282, 290 

Yumiaki, 299 

Yukimaro I, 298 

Yukimaro II, 298 

Yumisho, 198 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

ll!l III! Ill 




